PageSender: May the Fax Live Forever

Unfortunately, the facsimile is still here and is not necessarily going away anytime soon, at least not for businesses. My office receives faxes from referring healthcare practitioners, insurance companies and diagnostic centers for imaging or lab work.

Compared to email or the World Wide Web where one can, in the blink of an eye, share more information with one or multiple recipients, the fax is an older form of communication. I mean really, the copper phone line?

Its use today would be relegated to a show and tell demonstration as part of a lecture on the history of communication…..or to make a potentially life saving emergency 911 call if the power and cellular services go out.

While the phone line’s days may be numbered and as much as I hate to admit it, it still is a viable means of communication. In addition, if you are concerned about privacy issues, which healthcare practitioners should be, the fax is still superior when it comes to the preferred method of rapid written correspondence.

Fortunately, the fax has evolved to some degree because of the ability to electronically send and receive faxes. Mac OS X has the built-in capability of faxing a document through the print dialog and receiving faxes through email. I have used this feature in my office via a dedicated phone line and I was not impressed with its performance.

An alternative solution that is more elegant, flexible and powerful is Pagesender by SmileOnMyMac. Its ease of use in sending and receiving faxes as well as the many features inherent to the program make it worth the price of $39.95. There is also a free trial available before you decide to purchase.

These features include:

• Print, email and even ApplesScript received faxes
• Live addressing with AddressBook, Entourage, Palm, Now Contact
• Attach additional PDFs and image documents
• Automate sending of faxes and emails via AppleScript
• Receive faxes using your fax modem
• Design custom fax cover pages
• Use eFax, jConnect, EasyLink, MyFax.com, Fax.com or MaxEmail services
• Available in multiple languages such as English, Japanese, German, Italian and French

Features that are not available in Mac OS X and are available in PageSender:

• View sent and failed faxes
• Resend faxes
• Drag and Drop vCards and Groups
• Use electronic fax services such as eFax and jConnect among others
• Spam Filtering
• Preview Faxes
• Retry Count, Redial Interval
• Attach additional documents
• Print and/ or Email Sent Fax Confirmations
• AppleScript sent or received faxes

The program is listed as a printer and utilized via the printer dialog. PageSender can also be used with multiple computers on your local area network through Printer Sharing, which means that you need only one computer connected to the phone line and modem and that the other Macs can send faxes through PageSender on the connected machine as a shared printer.

PageSender also works well with multiple electronic fax services such as eFax and jConnect. I have used a dedicated phone line connected to my Mac as well as eFax for a digital solution and can say that both methods work equally well.

The advantage of using a dedicated line may be price if you send and receive faxes in very large numbers. The advantage of eFax is that no phone line is necessary and you can send and receive faxes remotely.

In conclusion, Pagesender is a polished, flexible and reliable program for sending and receiveing faxes. It will reduce your costs with regard to supplies such as paper and ink, which reduces the environmental impact, and it will open up space that is normally taken up by a traditional fax machine.

I use it exclusively in my office and it has served me well for the past year.

If you utilize another fax solution for personal or professional use, I would like to hear about it.