WinFax Pro 10.0

by Symantec

Product Features

• Send a faxed message as an e-mail attachment
• Send a fax to an entire workgroup without needing multiple fax lines or modems
• Merge documents from multiple sources into a single fax, with just a mouse-click
• Send or forward faxes that feature high-quality images
• Add signatures & logos to outgoing faxes

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005N6K8
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 10, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 1.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,166 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #2 in Software > Business & Office > Communication > Fax

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

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.

Product Description

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

73 of 73 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Think Carefully, December 6, 2001

By 

Bruce Albrecht "PS junkie" (Keaau, HI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: WinFax Pro 10.0 (CD-ROM)

We use this product in a small office environment. I decided to purchase it based on the fax sharing feature; the idea of having a fax server-like system at a relatively low cost was appealing. My assessment of the product is mixed. For the user it is simple to learn and use, anyone who has used Outlook Express should be able to pick up the basic features in a matter of minutes. And the ability to log and archive faxes instead of losing them in the paper shuffle has proved invaluable. For the administrator, however, expect to be challenged. Many of the more polished features don't work under Win 2000, and I've lost count of how many times I've come in to work in the morning to find the program crashed. To ease the transition for the office, I originally left our old fax machine on line as a backup. After 6 months of using this app, I still can't turn the old fax off. I would strongly suggest thinking carefully about your needs before purchasing this product.

55 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Buyer beware, May 14, 2005

By 

Terry R. Nye (Kingsport, TN) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: WinFax Pro 10.0 (CD-ROM)

I am not new to computers. I am used to fixing many kinds of software problems in Windows. This is not an easy product to install on a Windows XP system, especially after it has been upgraded to SP2. If you are expecting to simply install this product, reboot your computer, and start faxing, you will be sorely disappointed. Despite warnings in many other reviews, I purchased v10.03 for use on my Windows XP system with SP2. While I was able to eventually get it installed and running, it slowed my computer's reboot time to a crawl and trashed my scanner software. It took several hours to get most things working again.

First off, you should not try to install anything less than version 10.03 on an XP system. Symantec warns you about this on their web site. If you insist on purchasing WinFax Pro - which I do not recommend - make sure you buy version 10.03.

Secondly, WinFax Pro conflicts with the built-in Windows Fax program in Win XP. You will need to uninstall Windows Fax (which can be done through Control Panel's Add/Remove programs, but you need to look for it in the Add/Remove Windows Components section) to get WinFax Pro to function properly.

Third, after you install WinFax Pro your computer may take forever to reboot. It looks like it is hung up in this process, but if you go do something else for a while it will eventually reboot. I have not figured out why it does this, but it has definitely slowed my computer reboot time to a crawl.

Fourth, if you have a scanner, it may trash your scanner software (it certainly did mine - HP Scanjet 6300C). Symantec's web site has information about this in their knowledge base for WinFax Pro, so it must happen to many others, too. I did not use their fix, though, as I could not find updated twain.dll and twain_32.dll files that they recommend using to replace the ones they screwed up. Instead, I uninstalled and then reinstalled my scanner's installation software. I had to run Symantec's SystemWorks software to find/fix Windows problems and reinstall the scanner drivers a few times before it worked, but eventually I got the scanner working again. WinFax seems to have permanently disabled my scanner's buttons for doing quick operations, though. I have not found a way to restore button function. But I can scan with the Precision Pro software that is part of HP's available software downloads on their web site.

As far as I can tell, after fixing the above-mentioned problems, WinFax Pro 10.03 does seem to work okay. It does not appear to be any improvement over prior versions of WinFax, so unless you have upgraded to Windows XP you will not likely find it worthwhile to upgrade. As many others have stated before me, this is very buggy software that causes many problems with Windows XP and will be horribly frustrating for anyone trying to install and use this software on an XP system. BUYER BEWARE!

40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Save your money. This product is a [bad deal], November 22, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: WinFax Pro 10.0 (CD-ROM)

I can't remember ever feeling this frustrated, disappointed ...by a software purchase. Advertised as being greatly improved over previous versions, the only real difference between this version and previous versions is the font.Worse yet, the product is filled with bugs that should have been fixed in earlier versions; amongst other problems, it is rife with ".dll" conflicts, causing even that most ubiquitous application -- MS Word to crash. In addition, several advertised features are just plain lies, including: "more user friendly cover sheets," "easier application of signature stamps," "easy installs."

And for the final insult, the [money] rebate they advertise is actually an upgrade only rebate, which means if you threw out your receipt from the version you've been using for the past five years, you are out of luck, and [money].

Now let's see if Symantec will honor their 60-day guarantee.

UPDATE: Symantec did refund my purchase price (but not shipping of course). I sent a fairly detailed letter with my refund request and got no response other than the refund. In my business, customer service is EVERYTHING and I would never let a dissatisfied customer go away angry.