Adam first referred me to MaxEmail, and I've been paying them $15 per year for several years for the one fax a month or so I've needed to send or receive. For a buck or so a month, it saves me so much time in getting set up to fax. (That price buys you in an incoming phone number. You pay 5¢ a page (roughly, depending on a page's complexity) for outgoing faxes. Love them.
I went to MaxEmail and they are charging 9.95/month, 24/quarter or 80++ per year. Did I miss something?
Sorry, my bad. Found the 'lite' version that you cite, it's now $24/yr but still fair deal
Yes, I think the price has gone up, but it's possible Glenn was grandfathered in.
Ah, interesting. I figured I would be charged the prevailing price (as I don't have any special arrangement, and they literally don't know me from Adam), but I see that I was charged last year and will be charged this year $14.85. Must be a grandfathered deal.
You mentioned some hardware replacements for the Apple modem, what do you suggest to replace the wonderful PageSender Fax program that many have come to rely on?
I'm not aware of anything, but I'm looking into it. Any recommendations from others out there?
Another fax problem with Lion is the eFax service, which I guess is similar to MaxEMail. This has worked well for me for nearly a decade, but their client software is PPC last time I checked a couple of months ago. So perhaps I'll be switching to MaxEMail, sounds like it is cheaper also.
Something you don't mention: It might not be a software issues.
Faxing over IP/VOIP phone lines (which are becoming more common) may simply not work unless your ISP takes certain steps to allow it. And, even then, it can be iffy.
I spent almost a full day trying to get an HP OfficeJet to work. We finally had to slow the "modem" speed down to about 2400 bps. And, that was only after the ISP setup stuff on their end.
I remember a time when all the high tech people had three landlines in their house: Computer, Phone, and Fax. Now, many of these same people don't even have a single phone line.
I used to work at a VoIP provider and we hated the faxing question.
I'm actually quite amazed those multifunction machines haven't been directly integrated with eFax or the like. It'd seem so much simpler.
The other thought I had back when I was at the VoIP provider, is that we should hack together (or get Cisco/Linksys) to hack together a fax modem that acts as a translation end point for faxes. The fax would be received, then converted into a PDF or TIFF in the customer's office, then transmitted digitally to the provider to be spat out via a fax modem again, bypassing the VoIP problem.
I also was going to recommend eFax for receiving. Hopefully they fix the PowerPC problem, but in the meantime I just threw eFax onto my Windows installation in VirtualBox.
For those who are really light on sending I recommend FaxZero -- Two, two page faxes to US Numbers for free every day, and $1.99 for upto 15 pages if your fax is more than 2 pages.
There are similar problems with the software of my Draytek miniVigor 128 ISDN adapter, which I use, when I'm staying at my parents. The software is PPC, still doesn't use launchd and there is no fax support. Also there is a drawback with Apple's fax solution. It uses cups, so the pdf is converted to a universal raster image firstly and then into fax format. To avoid this intermediate step one has to install foomatic. But my old Nokia 6310i mobile phone can also send faxes. Unfortunately this is not enabled during paring of the phone using bluetooth. One has to do that separately.
Not sure what is offered in US, but here in NZ I get a fax number included with my cellphone. People fax me, I ring my voicemail and forward to any handy fax...the one at work or my landline at home...moved the Apple USB modem to the old G3 laptop (also running Quicken). Handy as I don't need to leave the landline on fax answer, but just set it to answer on the spot when i forward from the mobile.
hmm I use a brother MFC-7820N (fax, laserprinter, scanner with Ethernet) at work , under 10.6.8 the included fax (and scanner) are accessibly thru print dialogue and image capture. Can anyone using a similar setup under Lion confirm that this will still work ?
I am on 10.6.8 and FAXstf PRO still works fine. It is not supported however and sometimes there are problems receiving. There is no signal that the fax was well received, so the machine at the other end faxes again.
Can you check and see if FAXstf Pro is a PowerPC application, as I suspect it is? Just Get Info on it, and look in the Kind line.
I'm using Faxstf Pro 10.9 and the Get Info says it's a Universal application.
It's also a tad flaky on Snow Leopard, as I usually have to unplug my Zoom 3095 modem and perhaps restart to get it to locate the modem, but this usually takes care of it. Once it finds the modem, it tends to be reliable. I sure wish they had not dropped this software, I've been using it for years and I love the searchable fax phone book plus I have customized cover sheets for several purposes that I can switch back and forth between. I actually tried Pagesender and hated it, the interface seemed a lot more clunky than Faxstf.
If you still have a working Mac with internal modem lying around with TIGER 10.4.11 driving your system, fax away cheaply under PRINT/PDF.
JL Sydney
Something that some people might want to watch for is whether the fax modem supports Distinctive Ringing (which allows up to 4 phone numbers on the same physical line, identifying incoming calls by the number of quick ring pulses for each ring interval). You probably only want the modem to answer calls coming from one of the 4 possible ring patterns.
Some time ago I went on a search for an Apple-compatible USB modem that supported Distinctive Ringing, and came up empty. Anybody know of one?
If you want to try this, you have to edit the /usr/bin/fax file: Go to the line that reads
INIT="-iZ -i&FE0&D2S7=120 -i&C0"
add at the end to read:
INIT="-iZ -i&FE0&D2S7=120 -i&C0 -SDR=n"
where n is the Distinctive Ring pattern number (1 for a standard ring, 2 for 2 quick rings, and so on). At least this worked for earlier OSes. Don't know about Lion.
I don't pay the bills in our office so I'm not sure what it costs, but we've used Send2Fax.com for several years for incoming and outgoing faxes. The incoming is simple: a fax machine that dials our old land-line fax number reaches Send2Fax instead, which converts the fax to a PDF and emails it to us. For outgoing, we make the document into a PDF and attach it to an email addressed to "[fax phone no.]@fax.send2fax.com". We get a confirmation email when the email is sent and another when it is successfully received. This has worked for us on OS 9 through 10.6; I don't see why it won't keep working on 10.7.
I was able to get faxing working again in lion by purchasing a ten dollar USB modem off eBay. Lion picked it right up without any issues.
