PamFax, the Skype add-on we told you about a few months ago that lets you use Skype to send documents to fax machines has come out of beta. While in beta, the service was unavailable to US customers, but now that it has officially launched PamFax makes it easy to choose a Word or PDF document from your desktop and send it to any fax line in the world.

The application has a few other nifty new features, including the ability to work with Windows-compatible scanners. That means you can essentially turn your scanner into a fax machine by scanning an item directly to PamFax and then sending it off. There's also a PamFax print driver that lets you treat PamFax as a virtual printer. In other words, you can hit the print button in Word, Excel, Firefox, or any other application on your PC and sen the printout to any fax machine.

It costs about $.24 per page to send a fax, and you have to pay about $1.42 to sign up for the service the first time you send a fax. So if you happen to have a real fax machine lying around, it's probably going to be cheaper just to hook it up to your phone line. But for anyone who needs to send an occasional fax doesn't have a fax machine or a land line available, PamFax is a convenient, easy to use solution.

[via Skype Journal]

For most day to day purposes, you can pretty much replace your telephone line with a PC-based VoIP solution like Skype. You can make computer to computer calls for free. And for an annual fee or a relatively low rate per minute, you can make calls to telephone lines from your PC.

But up until now you had to hang on to your telephone line if you needed to send and receive faxes. Well, sort of. You could always use a service like K7.net to receive faxes and another web service like faxZERO to send them. But that's a bit of a clunky solution.

Now PamConsult, the company behind the Pamela call recording plugin for Skype is beta testing PamFax a new plugin that lets you send faxes using Skype. It looks like you'll still need a separate solution for receiving incoming faxes.

PamFax integrates with Skype, letting you send documents to fax numbers. You can also use a plugin for Word and Excel 2003/2007 to send faxes directly from those programs. You'll receive status notifications through Skype Chat.

PamFax isn't free. You'll need Skype credit to send documents. Rates vary from € 0.17 to € 1.59 per document. But when you install the beta, you'll receive € 0.17 to send your first test fax. Sharp-eyed Download Squad readers will note that the prices are all in Euros. We'd convert the rates to US dollars for you, but there's no point just yet. During the first part of the beta, PamFax is not available to customers in the US and Canada. You can download the file, but it won't install.

[via Skype Journal]