Best Home Phone System ?

Edwards Finance > Phones

Q. 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?

A. 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. 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. 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. 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.

Ask Edwards a Finance Question

Other Questions:

Vonage broadband phone service ?

I dumped my Verizon land phone and got Vonage a year ago last January. It's one of the best things I've done computer wise. I use my regular phone, it sounds as good or better than Verison at half the cost. Voice mail, caller ID, forwarding....

How do I use Advanced Find to search for a specific number which I don't know if it is a business or home number? Can someone help step by step?Also, using advanced search to find all contacts using a specific "business phone number" yielded no r...

Telephone Preference Service - the telephone equivalent of the Mailing Preference Service - stopping unwanted and unsolicited sales calls etc... Has anyone been on this service long enough to know if it works? I saw it mentioned in th...

you wonder why people are going to cellular substitution and VoIP, it may not just be price considerations; it might also be that they've run into a situation like this.The latest small, real-life exhibit to feed my suspicion comes by way of on...

I'm looking for a device that connects to a digital station line on a NEC PBX and converts it to an analog jack. I've found devices from Konexx and Northwest Extension that do this for Nortel and Lucent switches but nothing for NEC.It depends ...

Edwards Finance Menu

Ask a Question
About Us / Me
Contact Me
Privacy Policy

Sitemap

My Favorite Sites

PFBlog
Google Finance
Yahoo Finance
Motley Fool
Nveille's Financial Blog
AllFinanceMatters
Free Money Finance
2MillionBlog
The Terror Finance blog

Q&A Subjects