For some time now, I have only used modems on road trips, so purchasing one was my first order of business before trying Pmfax, which is manufactured by Keller Group. I settled on an external modem to avoid problems with lobotomized internals; you know, those WinModem things. I've had very good luck with my 56-KB Zoom PCMCIA card on the laptop, so I picked another Zoom -- the FaxModem 56Kx Dualmode (V.90 and K56flex protocol) -- for the external. By the time I purchased and installed the hardware, the beta had almost expired. I downloaded the software on the final day and requested a serial number that would allow me to run it in its full-featured mode (the Pro version) through the last day of the month.

I followed the instructions in the ample documentation included in the download, and created a subdirectory to hold all the programs and documentation. Then I went into that directory and typed ./pmfpro-l.bin. A license agreement immediately appeared, and after I accepted the terms, the file unzipped itself. Then I started PMfax (see the screen shot below) by entering ./pmfax, then entering the serial number provided.

Next, I had to add a new printer to /etc/printcap, and a new spool directory for that printer to /var/spool/lpd. If that sounds difficult, don't be afraid. I copied a few lines of text from the documentation into the printcap file, created the required directory by typing mkdir/var/spool/lpd/fx, then changed