Telephone entry system

How many units?

Hey Nick, look here

messagenews:475006ce$0$26052$ snipped-for-privacy@free.teranews.com...

ADC or NSL ?

We sell several brands. Linear has inexpensive models but I haven't tried them yet. I've had good results with Mircom for several years. We've sold quite a few of them and, so far, we've had only one unit that required warranty service. The manufacturer was very supportive. They shipped a replacement unit immediately.

In addition to standard telephone entry systems, they offer "no subscriber line" (NSL) models for complexes where some tenants don't have phone lines. If you're doing any inner city projects those are a must.

DoorKing is also very good -- more for the high end customer. They even make some models that are gold plated. I've sold a fair number of them as well. One guy bought three units for a large estate. The one at the main gate is gold plated. The others are standard. The only issue we've had with DoorKing is they sometimes take a while to ship. Most distributors don't want to stock a lot of expensive goodies so you have to order early. For an installing dealer that shouldn't be a problem but for an online store it can be a pain -- people want their stuff yesterday. :^)

Don't. They're crap. We've replaced Linear units in three developments so far.

Your "opinion" counts for nothing in this instance. You haven't worked with the product (or installed it). Mircom is an excellent low end solution. The panels themselves are fairly robust. Several of the units we service use the old DSC downloading interface/software. Ain't nothin' wrong with it, but it's a pain to try and run on anything but a Windows 98SE platform.

I actually haven't sold much (other than replacement parts). We had one unit get taken out by a perp wanting to gain entry to a building's courtyard. What he didn't know (until he dropped the gate unit and saw the camera) was that he was being recorded on a really good quality DVR. Full face shot. Beautiful. All the cops had to do was put paste the prisoner number under it.

Mircom's good that way. It's too bad their quality control has really gone by the wayside. I've personally seen three FA-1000 boards with chipsets inserted incorrectly (bent prongs). It's gotten so that it's the first thing we examine when we unpack a new board.

Heh... Most have "Nextel" cell phones... :-)

We've installed dozens of Sentex units. On units we have service contracts for (which we didn't install), the biggest problem is failure of the short haul modems. This is primarily caused by idiots who figure multi-pair telephone cable is the "cat's meow" and think the installation manual is simply "box filler" (pun intended). What's really cool about Sentex is that they provide free firmware upgrades (they even ship the chipsets to us at their cost).