Modular Technology may not be a name many of you are familiar with, but the chances are you may have used or even owned one of their modems at some stage. That's right, Modular Technology provide a LOT of modems to computer manufactures as OEM products and also resellers who re-badge them as their own products.

The unit itself it a compact affair with clear operating lights on the front, which plugs into an available serial port on your PC. It supports V90 connection and will auto-negotiate a connection speed with host, including error correction and data compression.

The modem and its associated software will let you send and receive faxes and receive voice messages automatically. Both of these operations can take place in the background whilst you use the PC for any other task. A microphone and headset (Not supplied) can be plugged into the modem to allow you to record your outgoing message and listen to incoming voice messages. Otherwise, if you have a sound card you can achieve the same results using that. The Super Highway modem can also be used as a full duplex hands free telephone. The remote message can be recorded by dialling into the modem from another telephone and also allows you to collect voice messages remotely.

The Galaxy software supplied was not very intuitive and gave some spurious results. Sometimes faxes and incoming voice calls would not be answered automatically although the options were set to auto-answer.

Our test connection to the Internet was established over 12 calls and gave an average connection speed of 46,000 bps.

The modem came supplied with the expected power adapter, a serial interface cable, a RJ11 telephone cable, 3 free internet CD offerings, a registration card and user manual. The manual is also supplied on the galaxy CD with voice and fax facilities. The CD also holds drivers for the modem.

Ease of installation and use of software was good. Features such as the fax and answer phone software seem adequate but, as discussed previously, it was a struggle to use at first but once you get into it and use it a few times all becomes clear.

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