Upgrading?

Hello,

I have a small home-based office with a Panasonic KX-TVS75/100 in the basement controlling the 4 business lines (including 1 dedicated fax line). I also have the doors and home phones (1 other line) split in, so we can answer doors throughout the house, and page different phones.

There are some problems that I've persevered with, but it's time to look at an upgrade:

- Voice mail: the built in system is very klunky, lots of extra waiting, key presses, etc. People get very frustrated.

- Updating things is very complicated, sometimes requiring a laptop and serial connection. I do it so seldomly that I never remember how to do it, and it's very, very klunky at best.

- I can't have my phone have different voice mail depending on if they hit a general extension (e.g., for sales press 1) or mine specifically (e.g., Matthew at extension 100)

- Strange stuff: the system time doesn't match the time on my phone display (why aren't these the same settings?)

- Support: Panasonic (the company) is painful to work with, dealers come and go. It becomes very expensive to bring someone in for minor stuff, so things have gotten dated.

So it's time to convert, and my preference (without getting into a holy war over it!!) is for a PC based system. We first used Watson (many years back), and it was a breeze.

So: How much rewiring may be needed? The unit is in the basement, wires coming up outside, and a box in my office with the phone lines going into it. Are there systems that make more or less sense given what I need (4 lines, voice mail, some flexibility, no expansion needs) Can they still support the hybrid aspects that we use (ie, home phones and doors)?

Thanks for any ideas.

Matthew

Reply to
Matthew
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You already own a working system. What KSU do you have?

For less than $50 you can own a set of serial cables that will work on any laptop to program both the phone system and voice mail. The key is that you HAVE to program the voice mail. You mention pauses and a klunky interface. DId you tell the system what to do when a user dials a digit? It's called customer service menus and it it not easy, but it primarily works when you define what happens when someone dials a digit.

Yep, Watson with VIS was a dream. Too bad it was only single channel. I still think the voice quality was the best of any system for its price range, and I think it was near $700 for the Watson with

1200 baud modem and VIS :-)

Perhaps if you post what you have, it would be easy to figure out a basic care package and custom service menu program to make your system behave.

You might also ask this question to snipped-for-privacy@kxthelp.com

Carl Navarro

Reply to
Carl Navarro

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