Ever wonder how you can send and receive faxes on your pager? It’s really not that hard if you have the capability to read text PDF’s on your pager. There are plenty of email to fax services out there - just Google “email fax” and make sure that they support PDF attachments for incoming faxes. Most of these services offer a free trial. Some even offer you a choice of area codes, including toll-free ones. Here are several links to companies that offer email-fax and fax-email to help you get started: eFax, Faxaway, jConnect, MyFax.com, Send2Fax, and my personal favorite, MaxEmail.  Another good resource to help you decide on a service, is Kevin Savetz’s FAQ page on how to fax from the internet.Now that you’ve chosen a service for your faxing needs, what about your pager’s capability for viewing a PDF attachment? T-Mobile Sidekicks from the SK2 on, have the capability of displaying the text from a PDF attachment to an email. This should work just fine for most faxes, if you’re not expecting a faxed picture.

If you have a BlackBerry, things get a little more complicated. I believe that most of the newer BlackBerries are capable of opening PDF attachments and displaying the text from that PDF, like the Sidekicks do, but I’m not sure. However, there are some programs you can load on your BlackBerry that will display PDF files such as the free (while in beta) BeamBerry, and Cerience’s RepliGo Professional which costs $24.95 quarterly or $79.95 annually.

For Palm OS devices, Adobe makes a free version of their Acrobat Reader application available here. It is a bit clunky, requiring you to install a conduit on your desktop Mac or Windows machine. A better and free alternative is MetaViewSoft’s PalmPDF.

Adobe also offers a free version of Acrobat Reader for PocketPC devices, but you can tell by the name that it probably is a generation behind, and may or may not work well on the latest Windows Mobile devices. Foxit Reader for Windows Mobile may be a more practical alternative, however it apparently does not support Windows Mobile for Smartphones (non touchscreen devices like the T-Mobile Dash, etc.) at this time.

To sum up, pretty much any email fax service will work if your pager can read PDF (or even TIF/TIFF) files. Happy Faxing!