FAXstf Pro - 10.9

I've used FAXstf for years with good success. It was never a great program but it was better than Apple's weak Fax capabilities and what little other competition there was. It was always a little persnickety but I could always get it to work. Fortunately I never had to call or ask for support. I finally did the upgrade to OSX10.5.5 (all the way from 10.4.9) and one of the few broken apps was FAXstf 10.8. I had to purchase the upgrade to 10.9 for supposed OSX10.5.5 compatibility. I depend on faxes for my business and spent pretty much a full day trying to get it to work properly with no success. This application puts files everywhere. Half of them invisible. Almost impossible to remove or find everything it installs (in true Windows fashion). Tech support barely read my emails (replied with canned responses for morons) and I can't afford three or four days of email back-and-forth while I beta test their product. This is a buggy and barely functional application that I would say is barely supported by Smith Micro (hell, you have to TRY to find it on their website). Make sure, if you're determined to own it, to download their fixes and utilities (FaxPrint Installer and Fax Magic) that are required to allow you to spend at least a few hours of entertaining troubleshooting. Bummer.

So, I finally gave up and started looking for an alternative. Last time I had checked there was nothing comparable. This time I found PageSender and it saved my butt. Installed in a snap with minimal intrusion. It just works, like a good Mac app should. I was even able to salvage, with some work, my cover pages. I was up and running in a fraction of the time it took me to unsuccessfully troubleshoot FAXstf.
All I can say is good riddance to SmithMicro and I'm headed right over to PageSender to give them 4 stars. Also, PageSender is $10 cheaper!

I have used this and have had no problems. I updated my system and hard drive and tried to use the built in OSX Fax ability and couldn't get it to do what I wanted (rearrange pages, try again when it got a busy signal).

I like the new features, the interface with Addressbook, the ability to rearrange fax pages. The best thing however vs. the built in Faxer if if you get a busy signal it will try again automatically. If it errors out you can change the fax number and try again, a lot better than having to rescan again.

Apple somehow managed to make one of the most stable fax tools on market (efax) unstable on 10.5.2 update (or security update).

As fax is a "realtime" thing with no excuse of offline time, I am trialing this product and most likely buying it. At least I would know some company actually makes money from selling it will care.

It is still cheaper than $60 "ink" toners in some cheap home fax devices :)

their web site says:

* PLEASE NOTE: The FAXstf Pro widgets require Mac OS X 10.4 to 10.4.10 to use.

I hope I am wrong, I really do .. but my gut instinct is that this is unlikely to be upgraded to Leopard .. and it needs to be because the Fax Printer Driver does not show up in Leopard. The application launches okay, but because of the Driver not being recognized with Leopard, there is no effect.

I actually called and talked with a gentleman who stated that it will be upgraded .. but because of his inability to provide a no-later-than date, I stated what I did above.

I have always depended on the very reliable FaxSTF Pro and earlier versions as well .. and I am still searching for a comparable substitute and quite honestly I cannot. I will use Apple's Print and Fax driver in the meantime, but FaxSTF Pro has spoiled me beyond belief.