Fax It? Forget It!

Of course, there's more to sharing information than copying quotes. What if you want to send an entire article to your coworkers? Scanning a page line by line isn't going to cut it. Wouldn't it be easier to tear out the story, make a photocopy, and fax it off?

Not if you use the HP CapShare 920 handheld scanner ($499), from Hewlett-Packard. The CapShare can grab an entire page in a single swipe. Basically, it's a portable copier that's about the size of a ham sandwich. The device, which weighs 12.5 ounces (including batteries), has a flat edge that you drag across a page and a monochrome LCD screen that you can use to check copies or to zoom in on scanned images. The CapShare uses rechargeable or disposable AA batteries and can hold from 30 to 50 letter-size pages.

Once you've scanned what you want, you can download it to your office computer using a serial cable or a wireless infrared port. The CapShare stores images as TIFF files (a format used by graphics pros) or as PDF files (the format used by Adobe Acrobat), which you can then fax or email from your computer. Do you want to be able to edit the words on a page that you've scanned? Then use Pagis Pro 2.0, the Windows software that comes with the scanner, to convert the page into electronic text. Just try doing that with a fax machine!

Coordinates: C-Pen 600, C Technologies US Inc., www.cpen.com; HP CapShare 920, Hewlett-Packard, www.hp.com

Tame the Paper Tiger

Even if sending and receiving paper faxes weren't a major hassle, you'd still have to deal with the problem of how and where to store them all. So, as part of your move to a fax-free environment, you'll need to digitize the paper faxes that have already crossed your desk, along with those that you continue to receive as your colleagues adjust to your new fax-free regime.

There are plenty of low-price scanners that will do the trick. (Taking advantage of rebates, you can probably get one for less than $100.) But my pick is the OneTouch 8600 scanner ($229), from Visioneer. No other model is as simple to set up or as easy to use, and none does a better job of helping you organize scanned documents.

Setting up the OneTouch 8600 is easy. Just hook it up to a parallel port or USB (Universal Serial Bus) connection on your computer. I recommend using a USB port. Going that route, I went from opening the box to making my first scan in less than 10 minutes. And, true to its name, the OneTouch lets you scan, fax, or email a document, or send a copy to a printer, by just pushing a button on its front panel. Here's another great feature: Using TextBridge Pro 8 -- the OCR (optical character recognition) software that comes with the unit -- the OneTouch can turn printed material into electronic text that you can edit onscreen.

Two caveats: First, if you absolutely have to fax something, you'll need to get your own faxing software. And second, the OneTouch's 36-bit, 600-by-1,200-dot-per-inch resolution, while crisp enough for business applications, isn't sharp enough to keep graphics professionals happy.

Of course, once you digitize all of your documents, you'll need a place to store them. For archiving really important files, I suggest using a CD-RW drive. RW stands for "rewritable" -- meaning that CD-RW discs function like old-fashioned floppy diskettes: They allow you to record (or "burn") CDs yourself, or to make copies that cannot be overwritten. CD-RW drives also read standard CD-ROMs and play music CDs.

The reasons for choosing a CD-RW drive over, say, a Zip drive have to do with storage space and compatibility. Zip drives typically hold only 250 MB of information, whereas a CD can hold 650 MB of data. (And recordable CDs cost only $1.50 each.) More to the point, a CD that you record for posterity is accessible from just about any machine that has a CD-ROM drive.

One of the easiest CD-RW drives to set up is the HP CD-Writer Plus 8200e ($299), from Hewlett-Packard. An external drive that uses the USB port on your computer, the CD-Writer Plus isn't as fast as an internal drive -- but at least it won't burden you with a lot of installation headaches. Just plug it in and load the bundled software, and you'll be storing data in no time.

Coordinates: OneTouch 8600 scanner, Visioneer, www.visioneer.com; HP CD-Writer Plus 8200e, Hewlett-Packard, www.hp.com

Sign on the Dotted Line

There are still a few basic business activities that might lead even the most ardent opponent of the fax machine to think twice before scrapping that machine altogether. If a client in a different city needs you to fill out a form, for example, or if your lawyer needs you to sign and return a contract, then you need a fax machine, right? Wrong. There's no reason why you can't digitize your signature, attach it to a document, and then return the material -- without ever putting pen to paper.