Home Phone System That Syncs To Computer? 405
An anonymous reader writes 'In comparison to the advanced technology in today's smart phones, the standard home phone is painfully backwards. My current setup is a Panasonic system that has 4 cordless phones over one base station. Setting the time on one phone changes the time on all the phones; however, this is not the case for the phone book. Each entry must be manually copied (pushed) to each handset. Is this as far as home phone technology has come? What I would like is a phone system that I could sync to my computer so I could update the phone book over all the units (if not sync with Address Book or Outlook), keep a log of caller IDs, or even forward me new voicemail notifications. Does anyone know if such a system exists?'
Re:no. it does not. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really for personal use, unless you live in an area where owning a cellphone is prohibitively expensive and a landline isn't. I think the number of geeks that would fit this niche would be very small. Other than this case, I really think the landline is slowly going the way of the dodo as far as home users are concerned.
However, being able to push something like this out to business and corporate clients may well be a viable opportunity.
The overkill solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Time for overkill solution number 1:
1) Buy a SIP to POTS adapter
2) Install asterisk on your Linux server (You do have a Linux server right?)
3) Create a web app, preferably Ruby on Rails, that connects to Asterisk over the management port and dials a phone number and rings it back to your home phone line
4) Profit until the system breaks and the wife wrings your neck because she can't call to make her beauty salon appointment!
Enjoy!
Regular phones are so backwards... (Score:5, Insightful)
... they work *all* the time.
Personally, I would never replace my POTS phone with anything "high tech".
Cost (Score:4, Insightful)
The biggest reason this doesn't happen is cost. Those crappy phones you mention (I have similar setup) costs the manufacturer pennies to make. There's no fancy operating system, no connectivity with disparate systems, no pricey architecture, nothing fancy. In order to do what smart phones do, the cost would go up. Your smart phone isn't cheap, but the price is subsidized by the phone provider through deals with the manufacturer and built into the cost of the plan as a whole. Good luck, but I wouldn't expect it to happen any time soon because most people won't pay hundreds for a home phone system when they can get one that works with 4 handsets for $50.
Depends. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want power, you really want VOIP phones(even if you end up using a copper POTS line to dial out, though you can often save money by using a SIP provider). Voicemail sent to your email, speech to text, configurable menues, contacts lists that connect to LDAP/AD backends, the whole deal. Unfortunately, VOIP hardware tends to be substantially more expensive than the old POTS stuff(unless you count software VOIP clients running on hardware you already have) and need proper modern data connections(either wired or wireless ethernet, usually).
Not For Consumers (Score:1, Insightful)
Unfortunately, no such beast exists in the consumer market. For businesses, definitely.
The problem is, home phone systems are quickly becoming extinct. The market for an advanced home phone system may have been there 5-10 years ago, but not today. Cell phones have become so prevalent that most people under the age of 30 don't even get home phone service anymore. Landline subscribers for all major phone companies keeps going down year after year.
Investing R&D into an advanced home phone system would be equivalent to investing in a sharper color VHS technology. There's no point. This problem isn't the answer you wanted to hear, but it's the truth.
Re:no. it does not. (Score:5, Insightful)
I really think the landline is slowly going the way of the dodo as far as home users are concerned.
My landline phone, never needs external power or batteries. It never has problems when the "tower" is overloaded with people trying to make calls. By LAW, it can always call 911 from any phone jack in any house. I never have to deal with "are you there? you're breaking up" nor deal with "ATT|Verizon|Sprint|T-Mobile has crappy coverage at my house..." related issues. I have a $5 corded phone from Walmart for emergency use and a cordless phone (requires external power) for normal use. Maybe as a society we're becoming too dependent on continuous sources of electricity.
And yes I've been without power to my house for days on end (ice storms in the Northeast). Light's didn't work but my home phone worked fine.
Re:no. it does not. (Score:5, Insightful)
My horse, never needs gasoline or battery power. It never has problems when the "highway" is overloaded with people trying to go to work. By NATURE, it can always get me home from any bar in any area. I never have to deal with "you need an alignment" nor deal with "FORD|CHEVY|DODGE has crappy dealerships near my house..." related issues. I have a $5 leather whip from Walmart for emergency use and leather saddle from Walmart (requires external buckle) for normal use. Maybe as a society we're becoming too dependent on continuous sources of transportation.
Re:no. it does not. (Score:1, Insightful)
It may not have problems when the tower is overloaded, but it will when the circuits from the CO are. Can call 911 or use the phone during a storm should something actually break the line going to your house. You still will have to deal with crappy coverage because people that call you will be using their cell phone. Thanks for playing.
Landline abandonment (Score:5, Insightful)
I see lots of people deciding they don't need a landline any more. Well, for a single person or in the case where everyone in the house has a cell phone, that can work. It works better when your wireless carrier has a WiFi component to their plan - although since they lose money by the fistful on these I would expect either the carrier or the plan to disappear.
But what happens when you have a three-year-old child? Going to get them a cell phone? I don't think so. And while you can teach a three year old to dial 911 calling from a cell phone may not be anywhere near as easy or helpful. In a house the GPS chip isn't going to work so well, so your phone isn't going to know where it is. Meaning that the fire department doesn't know where to go.
Landline phone service is also just plain more reliable. If you live in an area where there are weather-related power outages, which is just about anywhere, you can't assume that the cell tower infrastructure has much battery backup - some have none at all. Contrast this with the landline Central Office which when the batteries start getting low fires up the generator to keep dial tone available. I have had no electricity from the power company for more than 24 hours after an ice storm, before there were cell phones. After a few hours a cell phone would be a paperweight under these circumstances.
Why do you need a land line? Children. Emergencies. Power outages. Maybe you don't care now, but you very well might in the future.
And one thing to consider. If enough people drop land lines, they will disappear entirely. Try, just try to find a pay phone outside of an airport or train station today. Nobody needs them, unless your cell phone dies and you need to call someone like maybe a tow truck. Good luck, because pay phones have been declared obsolete. So now there is no alternative. Land lines might be declared obsolete as well - in which case good luck teaching your young children how to dial out on your Blackberry.
Re:no. it does not. (Score:2, Insightful)
But your horse needs food, shoes, shots and exercise. Not to mention a stable to sleep in and a field to run around in. I'll bet once the gp paid his five bucks at Walmart and plugged the phone in to its jack, he never had to do another thing to maintain it.
Go Analog (Score:4, Insightful)
Invest in a $5 phone book. Write once, works with everything.
Re:Why are you so backwards? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why on earth are you still using a landline? A mobile phone will probably be cheaper
Mobile phones are a lot of things, but being cheaper isn't one of them. We talk to Canada for over 1000 minutes per month. I can easily afford to pay for my Qwest landline with unlimited calling to Canada for just those long-distance charges. Any time you get into many minutes for multiple people, cell phone plans start to suck.
Re:no. it does not. (Score:3, Insightful)
Does anyone use landlines at home any more? I know two people who do. They are both very old, and are struggling with the move from rotary dialing to tone dialing. I don't think they would be the least bit interested in this.
Re:no. it does not. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why on earth would I want to pay $30/month for a basic phone line, with no Caller ID, Call Waiting, or Voicemail, and I have to pay for long distance on top of it?! For that same money- I can get a nice Cellular or VoIP plan with, at a minimum, Caller ID, Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, 3-Way Calling, AND Voicemail, plus unlimited or dirt-cheap long distance.
Based on the stability of my DSL connection, I really doubt a land line would be much more reliable in adverse weather or other conditions either, at least for where I live. I have a friend who lives down the street who's land line goes dead several times a year, and it takes an average of 18 hours to get it fixed each time. For power failures- my phones, network, and VoIP equipment are on a nice big UPS that will keep them running for close to two hours- plenty of time to deal with an emergency, or at the very least- call the power company.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's really no different than email. Who would pay $25/mo for a single email account? And they pay extra to see the "from:" address, or send to multiple recipients, or to send to the next state over, or for a username that isn't just a 10 digit random number?
And yet with Vonage, Comcast VOIP, etc, here we still are.
Re:no. it does not. (Score:3, Insightful)
While all of the points made therein are true, the inference, that one can always depend on a corded phone and a pots line, is false. Last fall, here in Houston in the days (weeks, in some cases) following Hurricane Ike, man POTS customers learned this first-hand. The reasons for the failure of POTS lines were several:
Perhaps more importantly, most calls for help did nothing more than tie up already overloaded emergency services call-takes and dispatchers who, for several of the early hours of the storm could only inform the callers that emergency services were not responding until conditions were safe enough.
Now, granted, this is an extreme case, but I should point out that my cell phone worked throughout the event. The carrier's network suffered from congestion for a while, until they got the word out that texting would be a more reliable away to contact those one needed to contact. The analog phone line has it's place, but it is, in most cases, not the panacea the parent would have us believe.
Re:no. it does not. (Score:3, Insightful)
I've had 2 outages on my land line in the last 10 years, but I have never had an outage on my cellphone.
Never had a dropped call? Never got the "redial, network busy" tone? Never got a "Call failed" displayed on the face of the phone? Those are outages.