WinFax Pro 10.0 Description:

WinFax Pro 10.0 shatters the idea of truth in advertising. The current version of the king suite of faxing software has many of the user-friendly features that have made WinFax Pro the de facto fax application. However, its box copy makes a few promises the software can't keep, so buyers beware: if you're running Windows XP or Office XP (or both), you're looking for trouble if you purchase this otherwise excellent program. WinFax Pro is full of features, including a cover page designer, an automated backup manager, a network fax-sharing module, and more. Its interface will be familiar and comfortable to anyone who uses Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express. The Message Manager--where you do most of your faxing work--is divided into Outlook-style panes, with several folders that include a receive log, a send log, an outbox, and a wastebasket in the upper left, a list of faxes in the upper right, and a multipurpose pane on the bottom that lets you view details about a fax or take a quick peek at it. Opening a fax for viewing invokes a viewer applet, which looks like Adobe Acrobat Reader. It comes complete with a pane of thumbnails down the left side for page navigation, with the main document view taking up the larger portion of the screen. You can compose fax documents in any word processor. To fax them, use the main WinFax Pro interface, a button installed in your Microsoft Word toolbar, or a drag-and-drop desktop icon. WinFax also lets you send faxes as attachments through Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, or Exchange, which is a mysterious feature considering you can send your documents as attachments without WinFax Pro. In any regard, while the feature worked well on a Windows Me machine with Office 2000, it caused errors and crashes on Windows XP. Other problems surfaced during testing. Faxing directly through Word XP with the toolbar button caused crashes. A "photo quality" mode offered in the send module doesn't come anywhere close to photo quality. Every time we opened Word XP, an error dialog appeared; Symantec's tech support said that it occurred because we didn't have a modem installed. That conversation took place after we'd sent several test faxes through our installed modem. WinFax Pro 10 worked as advertised on our Windows Me system, and it's full of outstanding features. However, if you've upgraded to Windows XP or if you're running Office XP, hold off until Symantec patches this program into submission. --Joel Durham Jr.