Scott,

>What is the "best" method for detecting a modem attached to the system, and then controlling that modem (dialing, connecting, sending files, receiving files, disconnecting)? I am currently using ComTools, which I find quite lacking in ability....

We do have a personnell (?spelling?)- planning software that has the following
online-features:

- send an email directly from the application to our support
(even if the customer itself does not have an email-account or such thing)
- connect to our server (we do it via INTERNET but direct dial-in would also
work), check for a newer Version. If it exists, download and install it
- disconnect when done.

For this we employ EasymailObjects (www.easymailobjects.com I think) for all the email-Tasks. It's a really nice tool and works lovely with VFP. However easy email-Tasks can be handled with much less.

The dialing tasks are being handled by Mabry's RASX-Control (www.mabry.com) which is the only dialer we found that is really satisfying all our needs (even the callback authentification is handled well - most of the other dialers lack here ).

On the server-Side we have a west-Wind WConnect WebServer running and all the data-transfers are handled via its wwIPStuff.dll that is also available seperately.

About the MSComm-Control: We use it for reading our PBX-Data and for direct serial communication (Barcode-scanners etc.) but I would never use it for such a complex thing as the modem-Communikation. The mabry-Control is only about $50 and I guess it would take me weeks to get this quality with VFP programmed (if I could do it at all!)

Hope this helps

Regards from Berlin

Frank