Despite communications being increasingly handled by e-mail, there is still a substantial need for the ability to receive and send faxes. For those of us who have public fax numbers, spam faxes are an inconvenience, wasting paper and ink. The ability to receive those faxes on our computer and delete them at our convenience is a great benefit. In addition, many people don't have a scanner so they have to send documents by fax. Lastly, some habits die slowly so faxing as a means of communication will continue unfortunately for some time — even though digital is a lot faster than analog.
Page Sender by SmileOnMyMac (www.smileonmymac.com) appears to be the best solution to the faxing on your Mac. If you don't have a multi-function printer, you can use Page Sender to send and receive faxes on your computer without getting a fax machine. And even if you do have a multi-function printer, I suggest it would be better to eliminate receiving paper faxes. For docs already on your computer, it's an easier and faster way to send faxes. No trips to the fax machine.
Page Sender requires a modem, either internal or external, which needs to be connected to a telephone line. The MacBook Pro and the new iMacs do not come with telephone line connections and you will have to use any USB modem connection (Apple's is $50). Page Sender does not work with cable, a cellular modem or a router. You must be connected to the telephone line. You can fax directly to the receiver or you can use the following email services — eFax.com, jConnect, EasyLink, and MaxEmail — with the fax sent by email to the service.
Page Sender works with Mail, Eudora, Outlook Express, Claris E-Mailer and several other email client apps. It works with many personal information managers, Address Book and most other popular address books. You don't have to manually enter fax numbers. Check to make sure that it works with your mail application and address book. Just drag the address into the Page Sender page. It is possible to automate sending faxes using AppleScript, but I did not try that functionality.
Page Sender supports live address look up and completion in Mail, Entourage and 2 other address books. Type a partial name and Page Sender presents you with a list of possibilities — similar to Mail.
You set up Page Sender as a printer and use the drop down menus to send a fax, similar to most printers. I had a bit of a problem installing Page Sender on my MacBook Pro and the SmileOnMyMac support people (note the plural) were very helpful, answering my requests for support within an hour. You can have a cover page if you desire. You can attach PDF documents when faxing (although I don't know how yet) and outgoing files are converted to PDF format. What's great is that Page Sender automatically converts all incoming faxes to PDF format. This eliminates the normal step of scanning a paper fax to resend or save on your Mac.
Page Sender can also send the fax as an email, but I'm not sure why you would not want to do this directly in your email app.
A 30-day demo is available. Nice interface. Easy to use. In summary, I think Pagesender is simple, inexpensive and it just works. As someone said, "My heartfelt thanks to ... the good people at SmileonMy Mac for finally making quality fax software a reality on the Macintosh".
