hkrodin's Full Review: 1718 Digital Answering Machine
I bought one of these machines at the local Circuit City. I wanted a stand-alone answering machine and they only had two machines to choose from: this AT&T model and a GE model. The AT&T model was about $10 more and advertised "excellent sound quality". I'm kind of picky about telephone technology and have always had good luck with AT&T/Lucent cordless phones. So I bought it.
Setting the time, date, etc. is kind of strange as you have to go through a menu system to set just about anything. Big deal, I figured, you only have to do this once. Then I called the machine a few times and recorded some test messages. The greeting that I heard in the earpiece of my mobile phone didn't sound very clear at all. And the recorded message that I played back on the machine didn't sound very good either. Both had that "quantized" characteristic that you get from sampling at too low of a frequency and with too few bits.
The last straw though, was that the phone had a strange habit of picking up the call, and then momentarily dropping off the line, and then coming back. This momentary drop is the equivalent of pressing down the switch hook of older phones (like when you have another call coming in and you want to switch over to the new call). The net effect was that the caller is put on hold, doesn't hear the greeting, and can't leave a message. The machine only does this if you have special ringing enabled on your phone service. We get that special ringing when someone calls from outside of the local area so that we don't have to run and answer the phone if it's a telemarketer. Well, I was on a business trip in Europe and kept calling home trying to leave a message for my wife and couldn't because the stupid machine kept putting me on hold.
I took it back to Circuit City as soon as I got home and exchanged it for the GE. The sound quality of the GE is just as bad, but at least I can leave messages!
19 minutes of record time Audible message alert and call screening Number announce (with subscription to caller ID) Remote access to messages Audible ...More at Amazon Marketplace
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