5th January 2001

Are you still sending paper FAXes? Slap yourself. This is the electronic age, dude. There's virtually nothing a FAX machine can do that a scanner and printer cannot. In fact, the latter option saves paper and allows transmitted document(s) to be duplicated easily. Sans scanner? Pick up your digital camera. Don't have one of those, either? Sell your silly FAX machine and get either one. Prices are plummeting for these increasingly-important office peripherals. There are online services which will help you coordinate the electronic delivery of FAXes to those still in the stone age. I'm using a program called "IPFax" via my Webley account, which is seen as a separate printer to Oogie Boogie (my big beige beast). NOTE: don't try to FAX complicated graphics unless you've dithered them down to two colors first. Er, all colors (white) and the absence of all colors (black). ADDENDUM: why are you FAXing graphics? CORROLARY: only FAX stuff that can't be sent any other way. Save paper, resources, and cost (for the possible long distance call). For black and white documents, I've found the TIFF format to work best; not only is the compression algorithm strong, but you can store multiple "pages" within the same image. If you don't use Paint Shop Pro, the Kodak Imaging application that comes with Windows is just as useful.