Best Home Phone System

[Michael Roback]

I am almost ready to move into a house I have been remodeling for a few years! I need to install a key system. I have been comparing Nortel, Samsung, Panasonic, NEC and Toshiba. Of these systems it apperas that the Nortel, Samsung and Panasonic are the most user friendly with respect to programming. I will have approximately 1-3 Lines to start and about 7-8 Locations + a front Door Box to start. So I presume that I need a 8X16 system? The Panasonic equipment seems kind of cheesy and they change models fairly frequently compared to the others. But it seems as though it is more geared towards residential applications. Also I understand that both analog and digital systems are available. Which one is preferable and why? Someone on this site has a website for do it yourself phone system installers and was going to send me a link to his online book but never did. Does anyone know who that is? Does anyone have any experience putting key systems in homes and if so which systems would you recommend?

[m Ransley]

I dont know phones but Hammacher Schlemmer guarntees everything they sell for life, and they do test and offer what they feel are the best systems They gave my a new Seimans system whem mine broke before I returned the old one, I was given 30 days for the return. Their quality of service is rare and worth looking into in todays age of disposable items that often dont last.

[Rich]

The Panasonic systems are very nice but at least with the TG2700 that I have, battery life is a MAJOR PROBLEM.

I would avoid this, and possibly the newer version as well if it uses the same battery pack.

Otherwise the system is fantastic. I think I am going to do some surgery and replace the NICAD pack with NIMH batteries and see if that is better.

I should have known I was in trouble when I first bought the unit and it had stickers all over it saying "Charge for 15 Hours Before Use".

[Jake]

Michael,

I like the Nortel systems and have one in my own home. If you're looking at

8x16, you're into business class systems and Nortel is a gold standard there.

Bear in mind that most business class systems are digital, and that will limit the kinds of things you can hook up to unit. None of the telephones are cheap (although because Nortel is so popular, E-Bay is a good source... I bought my whole system there).

Cordless is also expensive on most digital key systems. In my own situation, I just bought a couple of Nortel analog adapters and hooked them to the standard 900 MHz. units.

My system is a business class Norstar... with Startalk voicemail.... works like a charm.

Jake

[Jedd Haas]

Check out AT&T Partner systems, you can find complete systems pretty cheap on Ebay. For a while they were branded as Lucent systems; now they are branded Avaya. It it says Partner, it's all the same system.

[L. M. Rappaport]

On Sun, 01 Aug 2004 17:46:54 GMT, "Michael Roback" wrote (with possible editing):

I can't give you a specific recommendation as I don't have any experience with some of the above. However, I have and use a Panasonic KXTD-1232-4 with two expansion modules and a VPS-50 voice mail system. We have 4 incoming lines and about 30 extensions.

This system is hybrid - each port has a pair for digital and a pair for analog. They can be slaved together or kept separate (separate extension number). The advantage here is that you can use conventional telephones on the analog lines and use digital feature phones on the digital lines. By and large, almost every system feature is available on the analog phones except for Caller ID, volume, etc. - the stuff that is indigenous to the phone itself.

We've had it for about 3 or 4 years and generally, we like it. It is connected to two paging amplifiers, one for inside the house and one for outside. You can select either or both from any phone. The voice mail system can be accessed from anywhere.

Installation wasn't difficult, but programming is much more complicated than it needs to be. We used "Programmator" for the phone system and "Voice Mail Master" for the voice mail system. Still, we needed to resort to hyperterminal to configure voice mail for groups (used to light up lights on the digital phones so that one message would alert multiple phones) and I managed to put together something which works on the system which replaces the Panasonic proprietary software.

If you go for Panasonic, there is a Yahoo Groups newsgroup devoted to it. Most of the members are dealers and some are a bit proprietary in nature (they paid for training and don't like to help newbies) while a few others are really nice folks. Ablecomm has a website and sells what you need retail. There are others as well. Be sure to get ALL the manuals - you will need them and they are not always very clear.

Hope this helps.

[MC]

I have installed both Nortel and AT&T (lucent, Avaya) systems from enterprise and small office. In my situation I can do most repairs to the systems so I like to go with panasonic due to them having very easy access to spare parts and service, not expensive either. I have used one of the panasonic products similer but not the KXTD-1232-4 model, only used analog phones I think. I have also really liked using the newer multi handset wireless phones. I find Panasonic wireless phones less static and longer distance. Can get four or up to eitght handset models.

MC

[Claudia]

I agree totally - whenever I have bought any phone other than Panasonic - it has always been less than. since it isn't cost effective to install Nortel or AT&T at home. ;-(

[chuck yerkes]

You can also check out Asterisk. It's an open source PBX (which means insane amount of development). I just spent a day working at Linux world and walking around saw lots and lots of cards for computer -> Phone. Basically some computer running a unix becomes the PBX and can interface to VOIP or POTS lines (or ISDN and T1/E1 lines).

More, you get the chance to run regular phones through the house or VOIP phones if you wanted.

Hell, you could sit in a hotel room on your computer and dial the extension in your home office or kitchen over the net.

It runs on linux, BSD and perhaps MacOS X.

[MC]

Thanks for the info, I was just starting to look and see if something like this was being devleoped on linux as I would like to homegrow my own PBX but from common hardware and without going broke for the software.

I will be check>