App Review PamFax HD 6

In this year of 2012, technology is everywhere. We have more processing power in our pockets than we did in entire offices just a decade ago. We have robot vacuums and minature digital cameras and anything and everything that we can justify attaching a laser to we do. Flying cars can't be far off. And yet, we still find our businesses and governments relying on a most antiquated of technologies: the fax machine. We're busy people, we don't have the time to run down to the nearest FedEx Office to send a fax. Thankfully, to assuage our antiquated communication needs, there's a handy TouchPad app available: PamFax HD.

What makes PamFax great is that the sending aspect is digital. Your recipient isn't going to be looking at a black-and-white scan of a printed document - their fax machine is receiving an image unadulterated by the vicious scanning of a fax machine. Whatever documents you have access to on your TouchPad you can send with PamFax, be it locally-stored Word files, PDFs on your Box account, or an Excel spreadsheet hosted on DropBox. PamFax also supports Google Docs for your cloud storage-and-editing neads.

Sending faxes with PamFax is a straight-forward affair. Simply enter the recipient's fax number and name, select your document, and pick a fax cover letter. The PamFax service provides you with a free fax number from which to send and receive. The app comes with three free fax sends, after which point you can purchase additional credits either on an as-needed-basis packages, or as part of a subscription. The prepaid packages start at $12.79 for sending faxes, and the subscriptions start at $5.00 and allow you to send and receive. There are also per-page fees to take into account, starting at $0.11 per page.

Overall, PamFax HD's interface is relatively simple, though we'll admit that we're not huge fans of the bright pink buttons, even if they do fit PamFax's corporate color scheme. But for bridging the gap between the old school analog of the paper-driven fax and our modern high-tech tablets, we'll deal with it. Considering how often we actually have to send faxes, those three free faxes that come as part of PamFax coupled with the free price of the app itself make it practical no-brainer for install. You never know when you'll need to fax - with PamFax you can be ready to reach back into the 20th century at a moment's notice.