Hotfax Message Center 5

List Price: $69.95 Discount Price: $18.99

Features:

• Take complete control over the faxes you send & receive
• Optical Character Recognition (OCR) converts faxes into text
• Get more out of your faxing automated fax forwarding and broadcast fax capability
• Make them stand out with the new cover page designer
• Retrieve voice mail from any telephone and transfer messages between mailboxes

Customer Reviews:

Great Product [Posted on 2002-12-19]
This product will SAVE any small business a thousand or more dollars by using a computer and software rather than purchasing an expensive voice mail system. BRAVO to Smith Micro!
BTW, I purchased an early version (2.0) years ago, and it was very good then. I can't wait to start using 5.0!

Hotfax Message Center [Posted on 2003-11-18]
We had a hard drive crash, and lost our copy of Quicklink (and I couldn't find the original media anywhere.) I dl'd the demo, then purchased the new HFMC to install over the demo. The disk that Smithmicro sent was physically broken (they ship the CD in a flimsy envelope, no box) and when I asked for help getting my now-expired system up, they wanted me to send the broken one back before replacing (understand they had a credit card record of my original purchase) God forbid that you have any trouble with these guys. Their tech support is non-existant. They have one of the worst voice-mail-hell systems I've ever seen. I was absolutely furious by the time I actually got to speak with a human. And he was just useless.

I'm using this product to support a remote office call-in system and due to the above non-support, I finally had to buy another copy (downloaded this time) to get my remote ops back up. I feel like an extortion victim. I'll never buy from these guys again. Stars: one for product, ZERO for customer support. I am now searching for a replacement.

Appalling experience! [Posted on 2004-01-10]
After much research and what I thought was careful planning, I downloaded the software and found it would not work with my computer. To make it work would require a new modem for around $300.00. Tried to contact Smith Micro and they were "on holiday". Unfortunately, the time frame to return product expired while they were "on holiday" and they said it was too bad for me. Terrible customer service and I encourage people to do business with another company entirely.

unreliable software, looking for a replacement [Posted on 2005-04-05]
I have been using the 4.0 version of this software on a Windows 98 platform for several years, with disappointing results. The fax does not work well when it comes to sending file attachments, sometimes resulting in annoying crashes. Logging the sent or received faxes is a big problem, as the fax viewer cannot open the faxes stored in a default directory that cannot be changed. Very recently I updated my Windows 98 with all the critical updates from Microsoft, and HotFax crashes the computer (very reliably!) every time I try sending a fax. Don't buy this product, find something better.

Stick to the free FAX software that comes with Windows XP [Posted on 2005-04-10]
I just uninstalled it after I got it going (after wasting about 8 hours fiddling).

Here are the main reason I could not work with it any more:

(1) Stability: I have Windows XP Service pack 2. And nine times the application just closed with 'could not read memory error'. Twice it just hung for no reason. When it does crash, it does not try to restart the application - so if you leave it running and go away, be prepared to miss a few FAX's as it might not be running when you get back! It is a while since I have seen an application that is as unstable as this and prone to crashes on a stable well built high spec computer. People tolerated cr*ap 10 years ago when it was acceptable to get the odd blue screens of deaths - but not now! I cant tolerate an application that does not close gracefully after a problem, nor give meaningful error messages so if there are any conflicts, it could be resolved.

(2) My modem is on COM port 9. The automatic software would not let me choose this port as it only listed port 1-4. I had to go into a lot of trouble to reconfigure my BIOS beore it will detect my modem.

(3)It had an SMTP setting which is supposed to forward FAXes to email. I could never get this to work, as the 'SMTP Server setup' dialogue does not have any authentication screen so I can type in my username and passwords for my outbound mail server. Cant belive the developer did not think of this - fundemental requirement for any MAPI / SMTP integrated application

(3) user interface is very 90's and not compliant with the new norm. So you have to spend time familiarizing your self - rather than things being intuitive. The skins were very amateurish.

(4) I tried to open my Outlook contacts - but it wont let me as it does not support the password feature in Outlook or MAPI client - again pretty fundamental and shows the application was not thought out. When I did remove the password in my Outlook to make it work, it did sort of work - but sometimes when I accidently select a contact whose FAX number is not correctly formated, the program would lock up.

(5) The features and functions are inferior to what you get in the free Windows Fax service that comes with Windows XP and the OCR features that comes with Office 2003. Why bother? It was a complete waste of my time - and I am so annoyed that I actually felt compelled to write my review about a product for the first time in my life in here hopefully saving the same agony I had to endure during the last 9 hours.

Tim Muhundan
New Zealand

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