Elsa Fun Modem
When most of us hear the name ELSA we all think of Graphics cards...Well I'm sitting here on a Friday night thinking about having some Fun and apparantly ELSA can help me out???...Elsa have just released a new 56k Analogue external modem which has a Designer Makeover, We are all used to external modems being Grey or Black boxes with a few lights on the front...Pretty Boring in my book. ELSA have packaged thier new modem in an upbeat translucent Green Housing, named the "Elsa Microlink 56K FUN Modem"
Heres a Piccy of the Green Bundle of Fun....
The modem which is fully Plug&Play and has Global V.90 data & V.17 fax compatiblilty, comes packaged with all the necessary cables and it was nice to see a Long Modem-to-Telephone socket lead included as I have always been annoyed that this cable allways comes far too short from most manufacturers, thus having to use a 3 metre extension cable to go the extra 15cm that was needed. Drivers are supplied for Windows® 95, Windows® 98, Windows® NT4.0 and Windows® 2000. The manual covers installation very clearly and lists how to install the drivers for each Operating system, which was nice. Also included is ELSA COMMUNICATE lite software which enables the modem to be used as a Telephone Answering machine, for storing fax & voice messages,Telephony support,To send and receive faxes with a fax-back facility. It also includes an Integrated program to access BBS systems.
Installing the Modem was extremely straight foward, Upon windows bootup it was detected, I chucked in the Driver cd, the drivers installed without any problems.Next I installed the ELSA COMMUNICATE lite software, which also installed easily.
Right then lets connect to the Internet, It connected first time and at 50,667 which is the higest i've ever know (My Good old trusty US-Robitics only ever managed 45,557 on this line!!). I decided then to have a Quick game on UT with me Favourate I.P address to see how the ping was. I know this isnt exactly a benchmark but I always get a 150 ping with this UT server and Yes it was at 150 So no problems there..Right then 3 Games later and I won one for once :o), I thought I'd try downloading some software I needed to see if it gave any problems over a long connection period, I was connected continously for over 7 hours and experienced no dropped lines.
Now its time to check out the ELSA COMMUNICATE lite software. The user interface was very simple, enabling me to send faxes with ease, you can easily send and recieve voice messages with very good sound quality, which was a lot better than my last Fax&Voice software/modem combo. Also included was a handy Scan then Fax feature which I tried out and worked very well.
Conclusion: Elsa have definately managed to brighten up the top of my computer case whilst providing a simple to use and feature packed Fax/Answerphone software interface. If youre looking to upgrade your modem or are just simply bored with your Ugly Grey box and want to brighten your P.C up then Elsa's 'FUN' modem would make a wise choice.
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