View to a Thrill

A salesperson reviews a piece of hardware used for viewing faxes.

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FaxView may not be the most versatile tool on the planet, but it sure is fun

The FaxView handheld fax viewer, by Reflection Technology Inc. (Waltham, Mass., 800-670-4FAX), is a fascinating "gizmo," as my 3-year-old son refers to it. It's a sleek charcoal-gray ellipse, a bit bigger than a TV remote control, with an oval viewing window at one end. To receive a fax, you plug the adapter into a conventional or a cellular phone jack and then hold the window to your eye and look inside, View-Master style, to see the fax on a floating screen.

Because FaxView is lightweight (less than half a pound) and fits in a coat pocket, you'd think it would be an ideal tool for business travelers who receive faxes on the road. After taking a day to charge FaxView's batteries, I began carrying it on sales calls, showing it to my colleagues and my wine-distributor customers. The machine performed flawlessly, receiving, scrolling, storing, and retrieving faxes. Everyone marveled at the technology and enjoyed peering into the window to read faxes, but there were questions about FaxView's practicality. Many of the distributors remarked that they rely on voice mail to receive information while they're on the road. Others carry laptop computers, which can receive faxes and do a lot more. If all you need to do is receive faxes, however, the $299 FaxView is a bargain compared with a $2,500 laptop.

You can also send faxes using FaxView, but it's not easy. You go into the menu and select preprogrammed phrases or call up a virtual keyboard and spell out messages letter by letter using the Scroll and Select buttons. And getting a hard copy of a fax is cumbersome. Because FaxView can't be connected directly to a printer, you have to send the fax to another computer before you can get it on paper. Still, there's truth in naming: the thing is called FaxView, not FaxSend or FaxPrint.

Overall, the compact Fax-View performs its stated function exceptionally well. Certainly it's useful for travelers who don't have laptop computers but need to receive information that is too complex for voice mail. And if the technology for this product advances quickly and FaxView can soon send and print faxes as easily as it receives them, no doubt we'll all be clamoring for one.

Dennis Cakebread is vice-president of sales and marketing for Cakebread Cellars, a producer of premium varietal wines in California's Napa Valley.