■ How to FAX a document using your windows computer

Hands up who knows what a facsimile is? It is the grandaddy of emails from an era when people listened to music through audio cassettes and other quaint devices. You don't get to hear about FAX much today as you can just send documents through email as attachments. However if you happen to live in greece or some other 3rd world country, where the computer and internet revolution of the last 30 years didn't make any indentation, you still need to know about retro communication methods.

The other day I needed to send a document to the biggest greek health insurance office, and they didn't have an email. That's typical, they either don't have computers or if they somehow have a website with an email address, any attempt to contact them that way is pointless. They will either ignore you or reply that you should phone them instead (this reminds me of the advertisement where a washing machine was used as a rock to beat clothes against in ganges river).

Anyway, I needed to send that PDF certificate to them, and the only way was sending a FAX, which needs a special telephone. Then I remembered that my laptop had an old school dial-up modem; putting two and two together and after a google search it appears quite easy to send a FAX from a computer. Just "print" the document using the special Fax device (it should be listed among your available printers). This opens up the windows scan and fax applet which attaches the document as an image and sends it as a fax to the number you need.

Quite possibly you could do the same without a built-in dialup modem, using your mobile phone paired as a modem.

Tune in next week to learn how to write with bird feathers and an ink bottle <g>