Product News

Product Review: SpoolFlex from DRV Technologies

More and more folks are trying to save money, increase efficiency and, if they can, do so while "going green." Becoming more "green" describes someone who's becoming ecologically conscious about the environment in which we all live. Chances are, you've heard of the Green Party, Greenpeace and other "green" organizations.

Let's face it: If there's one thing that we waste, it's paper. And if there's an IT area that we all wish we could save some bucks and time on, its forms costs and the time spent loading and unloading paper.

Well, having done it a time or two recently, I can tell you that developing your own forms layouts and printing or faxing them isn't really rocket science. Like many other tasks in this business, once you've done it a time or two, you're going to wonder why you haven't done it all along.

Going green also encompasses sending invoices and other forms almost instantaneously to vendors via e-mail or fax. This also tends to be a more accurate and efficient means of delivery.

In the next few months, I'll be looking at a few vendors that provide products that work with forms and manipulate spool files on the fly through overlays and other software on your systems.

This month, let's examine SpoolFlex from DRV Technologies (www.drvtech.com).

Installation
On the PC and OS/400* side, installation was fairly straightforward. Just remember that you need the subsystems and jobs up and running under OS/400 before the PC side can communicate with the box. And you don't need any other software because SpoolFlex is fairly self-contained once it makes the IP connections.

Next page: >>