BITWARE LITE VERSION 3.22

Overview of Package

Bitware Lite is fax software, a terminal and an answering machine program all in one.

Evaluation

Installation

Cheyenne Bitware Lite for Windows comes on two floppy disks and is sometimes packaged with voice capable modems. Installation took five minutes, and it began with a registration form. This form was rather annoying as it required that you fill out at least six pieces of information about yourself. This annoyance continued later on as each time the program was run the form would pop up and request that you register the program on-line. The program also attempted to auto-detect the modem's type, but was unsuccessful. A later attempt through the setup function properly detected the modem. Other than these few glitches, the installation went well and finished by rebooting the system. No warning was given about the system reboot so be sure to save any open documents. Bitware Lite takes up just a little under 5 megs of hard-disk space, most of which are files for it's voice messaging system.

Screen Layout

Of all the programs tested, Bitware Lite features some of the cleanest screen layouts we encountered. Starting with the main screen which simply consists of a toolbar with 10 buttons the program announces it's differences. Actually on our first exposure to this 10 button window we were a bit bewildered. It's appearance is very unlike most normal windows programs and we were constantly looking to the menu bar for functions that were only found on the toolbar.

Generally each Bitware screen encompassed a single function, however, all options required for that function were on screen or just a mouse click away. For instance, the 'Dial Fax' screen included dialing options, single recipient entry fields, speed dial buttons, and buttons to add a cover page, set a dialing schedule, preview the outgoing fax, and to send the fax. Unlike some of the other programs, Bitware Lite required less mouse clicks to perform the same jobs.

Receiving Faxes

Setting up Bitware to receive faxes is relatively simple. Just click on the 'Receive' button on the main Bitware window and a fax manager starts up. Though do be sure to set the incoming call type to 'fax' instead of 'fax/data'. The 'fax/data' option will allow for the reception of binary (original data) files, however, Bitware requires the caller to send some extra dialing codes. Chances are most incoming faxes will not be original data transmissions.

Like all of the other programs evaluated, Bitware allows you to view any received fax with or without printing it, and to print a fax to a printer as it comes in or at a later time. The Bitware software claims to 'clean up' the appearance of incoming faxes and indeed this package consistently had the best resulting faxes. Bitware Lite automatically compressed incoming faxes with a proprietary compression scheme which reduced the fax file size to about one quarter of their actual size.

The fax viewer's features included the ability rotate the fax, zoom in and out of the image, and an export functions for saving the fax in common bitmap formats such as BMP, TIFF, and PCX. All of these features were found in the other three packages.

The receive log in Bitware Lite was the nicest of all the packages. It included a handy thumbnail view of the received faxes for quick browsing, a feature not found on any of the other programs.

Bitware Lite was the only system to come with a truly automatic fax forwarding feature. Essentially the user places the program in fax forward mode and specifies a send delay time and the forwarding number. From then on all incoming faxes are rerouted to the other fax number.

Phone Book Capabilities

The phone book system is very easy to use, and very graphical as well. Users may create several phone books, though only one may be selected at a time. Fax entries in the phone book are displayed in a scrollable window and can be selected in multiples using the MS Windows standard of holding down the control key while selecting with the mouse. Groups are displayed in a separate window and may be selected in a similar manner.

Adding new numbers to a phone book was a snap, and adding them to a group was just as easy. A full set of information fields were available for each entry in the phone book including company name, voice phone number, and comments.

The fax entry window featured a tab system where each tab represented an alphabetical range of letters, for example A through D. These tabs can be used to quickly find the first entry in the fax recipient list that had it's sorted field fall within the tab's range. This feature was not always intuitive, however, since the display would not change when there were no entries within a selected tab's range. The user is never really sure if their mouse click has registered on the tab. The list of recipients can be sorted by name or by company, and it was possible to perform searches on each field of an entry.

The only thing we did not like about the phone book was the fact that we could not send our faxes directly from this window. If a user wanted to add or remove some names before sending a fax, they would have to enter this screen and perform the operation. The send fax window did not show the list of recipients.

Cover Page Composition

Bitware Lite's cover page creation was not as extensive as some of the other programs. Only two bitmaps were allowed on the sheet. One for the letterhead and the other for signatures at the bottom. A simple built-in text editor allowed different TrueType fonts to be used for an included message and the user could insert 'mail merge' fields for both the sender and the receiver. Text placement was very primitive with only left justification, tabs and carriage returns used for formatting. Bitware did not come with any pre-made sheets.

Sending Faxes

Like all of the other fax programs Bitware offers two methods for sending faxes. The first method uses a custom fax/printer driver that lets a user send faxes directly from any windows program that has printing capabilities. Documents are printed as normal, but the Bitware send manager is activated allowing the user to select recipients, attachments, and a cover page. One problem we found with Bitware's implementation of this method was that the Bitware program had to have been running else the fax driver would fail.

The second method is to create a fax document directly in the Bitware program. This method allows the user to send a simple cover page with an imbedded message and multiple attachments. Attachments may be either previously created fax documents or bitmap picture files. Bitware has the added feature of being able to preview a fax before it is sent.

Bitware allows for eight speed-dial buttons for frequently called numbers, which is what you usually have on a regular fax machine. This is one option the other systems did not carry at all.

Faxes may be sent to multiple recipients via the phone book window. Scheduling of a faxes is fairly simple. A rather plain text window with a few up/down arrows allows a fax to be scheduled for any date and time. Faxes may also be sent immediately with the click of the 'manual send fax' button. Faxes that fail to transmit can be rescheduled through the send fax log.

The send log is fairly standard showing the status of each transmission. As stated previously, failed transmissions may be rescheduled from this log. A schedule window shows pending transmissions. The program even estimates a time to fax and displays the number of attachments to be sent.

Help System

The Bitware on-line help system was one of the best of the four packages. Context sensitive help is available for just about every component of the program. Users can also perform successful searches on terms used by the program. Thus typing 'attachments' will find information of adding and creating them. The help system lacked diagrams, but the text was generally understandable.

Extra Features & Cost

Bitware Lite is more than a fax program. It also comes with a terminal emulator for data transmissions, and it comes with a voice mailbox/answering service for use with a voice modem. Bitware Lite has a average Canadian retail price of $89.95.