Manufacturer: Smile Software

System Requirements:

Operating System: Mac OS X version 10.1.3 or later

Price: $29.95

Download : You can download a trial version at the Smile Software Download Site.

At last, users of OS X have reason to rejoice. That is if they want to send faxes from their computer! When Mac OS X first came out, faxSTF was the only way to send a fax from the new operating system. It was a slow, buggy program that has advanced somewhat as the operating system has matured. I personally never had success sending faxes with the OEM version Apple bundled with new Macs.

Fax To Anyone Quickly! (click to enlarge)

PageSender makes sending faxes a breeze once again, harkening back to the good old days when GlobalFax software was the only game in town. PageSender’s interface is relatively simple yet powerful. PageSender installs as a printer driver. Once installed, any document from any program can be faxed by “printing” it to the PageSender “printer.” The fax numbers for the program are stored in the Apple Address Book program (or multiple others as listed below), which is significantly different from the standalone fax programs most users have been accustomed to under OS 9. PageSender has a “live addressing” feature which allows the user to type the first several letters of the recipient’s name; the matching names from the Address Book program appear and the proper name is then easily selected. The one drawback of this system appears to be if only a company name is entered in the Address Book. Even though a valid fax number is entered, the live addressing feature does not work. A first or last name must be entered in the Address Book program for live addressing to function properly. Likewise, at least one of the numbers entered in Address Book must have a label as a home or work fax. A properly formatted Address Book entry can also be dragged and dropped into the PageSender printer driver. If a Custom Field in the Address Book program has the name “fax” in it, that number will also show up as a choice in PageSender.

Cover Sheets Made Easy! (click to enlarge)

You can utilize the default cover sheet or customize one relatively easily. In TextEdit, a rich text format (RTF) document is created that makes use of unique PageSender tags to automatically fill in the recipient’s name, date, number of pages, message, etc. The program supports faxing additional documents along with the one you are printing. Other advanced features include scheduling a fax for a specific date and time or the user may choose to defer the sending of a fax. To send a fax which has been kept on hold, select the fax in PageSender Fax Center's Out folder and press the Resend button. In addition to sending faxes manually or to recipients in your Address Book, PageSender allows the user to select an email address used for fax-to-email services such as eFax.com, jConnect, EasyLink, and MaxEmail.

Page Sender supports the following E-mail client applications:
Claris E-mailer, Eudora, Mail, Mailsmith, Microsoft Entourage, Outlook Express, PowerMail

Page Sender supports the following Address book applications:
Address Book, Claris E-mailer, Eudora, Mailsmith, Microsoft Entourage, Now Contact, Outlook Express, Palm Desktop, PowerMail

At last, faxing from OS X has come of age and PageSender is the preeminent application in the category.