Fax software offers the perfect solution if you want to send faxes without buying an expensive, bulky fax machine. But in recent years decent fax applications for the Mac have been tough to find. Smith Micro's Faxstf X (Review: May 2002) has been available for about a year, but it's extremely limited.
Fortunately, over the past several months, some new fax applications for Mac OS X have surfaced, giving you more choices if you want to use your Mac as a desktop fax machine. We evaluated three single-user applications: Ben Mackin's Cocoa eFax 1.0.3, Glenwarne's FaxElite Solo X 6.5, and Smile Software's Page Sender 2.3.1. We also took a look at two solutions for workgroups that need to send faxes over a network: Glenwarne's FaxElite Network X 6.5 and Soft Solutions' 4-Sight Fax 5.0.4 (see 'Sending Faxes via a Network: Not Quite Ready for OS X Prime Time'). While testing these products, we faced a frustrating onslaught of crashes, nasty bugs, and poor application design, but we emerged confident in one amazingly versatile application: Page Sender. The Perfect Fax Application Fax software must be at least as easy to use as a fax machine. Ideally, setup should be painless, sending a fax should be as simple as printing a document, and receiving a fax should take no effort at all. In addition to these basic requirements, we also wanted a way to view previously sent and received faxes, store and retrieve fax numbers, and create customized cover sheets.
FaxElite Solo X We knew that FaxElite Solo X would give us an interesting ride as soon as we installed the program and saw the little installation note suggesting that we set our OS X machine to load Classic on startup. Yes indeed, FaxElite is not fully OS X native. FaxElite is composed of five separate applications, each specialized to handle a specific aspect of the program. There's FaxControl, which processes your faxes; Faxer, which helps you address your fax and add a cover page; FaxViewer, which displays a catalog of your sent and received faxes so you can view them; CoverDesigner, for creating custom cover pages; and Phonebook Editor, for storing fax numbers you add manually. This collection of applications makes FaxElite Solo unwieldy and cumbersome, and only FaxControl is a true OS X application -- the rest must run in Classic. While most of the time the program opens and closes each of the necessary applications as needed, we typically had at least three -- and often all five -- open at once. As a fax application, FaxElite works like any printer.
When you want to fax a document, you go to the Print dialog box, choose FaxElite from the printer menu, and click on the Print button. This prepares the document for faxing and opens the Faxer application. If you've entered names and numbers in your FaxElite phone book, you can select one from a drop-down menu that appears near the Name field. To fax your document to more than one recipient, you can click on the Phonebook button, which allows you to select as many names as you wish. FaxElite Solo lets you select additional files from your hard drive to send in the same fax transmission. Unfortunately, we couldn't get this feature to work properly. During one attempt, the FaxControl application crashed while trying to render the attachment.
Mac OS X users should note that while many features are listed by online fax services, not all of them are always available on the OS X platform (sometimes a system is listed as “Mac friendly” however that is for basic functionality only – some advanced features may not be completely compatible with the OS X system). Always check for software updates before connecting the device to your Mac for the first time. If the appropriate driver is available from Apple, your Mac will install it automatically. If the appropriate driver is available from Apple, your Mac will install it automatically.