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Copyright © 1999 by Woody Liswood. All Rights Reserved
WinFax Pro 9.0 or TalkWorks 2.0?
What a mess. When WinFaxPro (Contact: 1-800-441-7234) upgraded from 8.0 to 9.0 TalkWorks, the voice messaging part of all the previous WinFaxPro's became its own product - TalkWorks 2.0. However, if you used TalkWorks to run your voice mail system under WinFaxPro, you don't need to get another copy of WinFaxPro when you upgrade. TalkWorks 2.0 now contains WinFaxPro 9.0. So the upgrade from WinFaxPro 8.0 should be to Talkworks rather than to WinFaxPro 9.0.
However, if you only used the fax portion of WinFaxPro 8.0 or earlier, then you only need to get the WinFaxPro 9.0 upgrade. This nonsense must have come from the mind of a marketing MBA with a perverse sense of humor or from a focus group who did not use either product, since it could not have been initiated by a user or anyone else knowledgeable about either program.
However, both programs are among the best at what they do.
A large number of fax modems also support voice messaging. I, for example, use an USB based US Robotics V.90 56K voice - data - fax modem. The data modem part connects to the Internet and other places. The fax part sends and receives faxes, assuming of course, that I remember to leave my computer and modem turned on. I use the voice part to have voice messaging on the same phone line as I send and receive faxes. With TalkWorks and WinFax, this is all automatic. Just install the software, tell it to monitor the modem phone line, and remember to check occasionally to see what voice or fax messages you have.
TalkWorks adds a sophisticated voicemail capability to your computer. You can set up multiple mailboxes, each with special messages, and your single phone line can appear to your friends and customers as if you are a large important company with myriads of folks awaiting a call. You can also set the WinFax portion of the program up as a fax retrieval system so your friends and customers can call your computer, head to the appropriate> mailbox or fax retrieval box and just get voice or faxes back.
Yes, there is a fax program that comes with WIN95, so if all you need is fax and you are running WIN95 you are OK, but under WIN98, Microsoft dropped the fax software so you need WinFaxPro to do the faxing.
This is another of those programs that I think are must have programs. While perhaps not as critical as AntiVirus and Utility programs, I would not start up my computer without WinFaxPro and TalkWorks ready to do their thing.