prophet@umcp-cs.UUCP (06/18/84)
<>
I am seriously considering the purchase of a telephone answering machine. I
have looked around and I have read the Consumer Reports article on answering
machines, and I have pretty much decided on the new Radio Shack top-of-the
line model. I forget the exact model number, but I know that it is the re-
placement for the TAD-150, and that it sells for $299.95.
I used to work for Radio Shack, and if memory serves me correctly, I seem to
remember that Radio Shack had quite a few problems with the TAD-150. I asked
the salesman about this, and he said it was true, but that the replacement
for the TAD-150 is a "new and improved" version of the TAD-150 that corrects
all the problems Radio Shack had with the TAD-150. My question is, does
anyone own this answering machine, and if so, how reliable has it been? In
my searching for an answering machine, I find myself a bit dismayed at the
fairly low quality of the majority of answering machines. It seems that they
are designed to be thrown away instead of repaired when something goes
wrong. As a matter of fact, many consumer electronics products seems to be
that way now. I would hate to spend $300 on an answering machine only to
have to throw it away after the 1-year warranty runs out.
Any information on this new Radio Shack answering machine, or any sugg-
estions for a different brand (with similar features) would be appreciated.
Dennis
--
Call-Me: Dennis Gibbs, Univ. of Md. Comp. Sci. Center.
UUCP: {seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!prophet
CSNet: prophet@umcp-cs
ARPA: prophet.umcp-cs@CSNet-Relayron@brl-tgr.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) (04/26/85)
This was discussed about a year ago, but I never did get any good information. I am looking for a telephone answering machine with the following features: 1. Date and Time that gets announced when I play back the messages remotely. 2. Remote Message playback, preferably beeperless, preferably one that uses touch tones in a sensible way and has a security code that can be changed by the user. 3. The feature that if I pick up the phone from anywhere in the house, the answering machine disconnects. 4. The outgoing message NOT an endless loop cassette. Regular sized cassettes are preferable, but micro cassettes are OK. What I had for a few days is a Record-a-phone. It has feature numbers 3 and 4. It has a simplistic touch tone decoder for the remote (only one row) and the numbers are not changable. Since they use ony one row the codes end up being something like 1-3-2 or 5-6-4. It uses two full sized cassettes, but has the annoying habit of not erasing the outgoing message completely, I have to erase them outside of the machine. It also will record regular phone conversations optionally supplying the 15 second beeper. It also doesn't record the date. To do this, the phone store sold me a wizmo called the "Time Connection." What it does (and this was mis- represented to me when I bought the unit) is sense the beep from the answering machine and then speak the date and time into the phone line. Problem is that the person leaving the message has to wait until Darth Vader gives the date before leaving their message. Problem is, that afte hours of fiddling with this, it won't respond to the Record-a-phone's beep. The same unit will work with other machines, though. Retail price about 40 dollars. It would also be nice to be able to skip automatically to the next message rather than doing a manual fast forward. -Ron
ron@fluke.UUCP (Ron Pankiewicz) (10/24/85)
Rumor has it that this news group recently carried a
discussion on telephone answering machines. I missed
the articles, but am now in the market for an answering
machine. Our site does not retain messages far enough
back to include these articles. Could someone please
mail me (or post?) a summary of the information they
gathered from the articles? I'm particularly interested
in reliability of different brands and models, and any
other information you feel is important. Thanks.
-Ronron@brl-sem.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) (10/25/85)
> Rumor has it that this news group recently carried a > discussion on telephone answering machines. I missed Actually, I asked a couple of times, but I did not get any response. I was looking for the following features: 1. Remote, Beeperless message pickup 2. Date and time stamp recorded on each message. 3. Intelligent remote control handling. 3. No endless-loop cassette. Well, the closest I came is the new top of the line PhoneMate. It has a little voice chip that records the day of the week and the time after each message. It is also used to tell you how many messages it has for you when you activate the message pickup, and it gives you a little voice menu after playing the message. It uses two standard micro-cassettes. It comes in two models. One which is just the answering machine, and another with an autodialling telephone. DRAWBACKS: Even with the special batteries (expensive) installed it still seems to forget the time and stored telephone numbers on a regular basis. The things ring sensor is very sensitive to any transient and just unplugging it and plugging it back in will make it ring. There is no skip to next message feature on either the machine nor the remote. WARNING: Of all the beeperless machines I was looking at, the security on the remote is lousy. The Phonemate detects only on touchtone as it's access code. The Record-a-call just sense one row. I am not impressed. The only machine I saw with a full touchtone decoder and setable access code was the Panasonic Easaphone which has two rotary switches on the bottom to allow you to set a two digit code to any combination of the 12 buttons. -Ron
rosen@exit26.DEC (Barry Rosen) (01/22/86)
I want to purchase a telephone answering machine. I have been told that the cost of these devices has come down substantially and that more "standard" features are now available such as remote message retrieval and voice activated message recording. The equipment will be used primarily by my wife who works out of our home and therefore I feel that a very reliable piece of equipment is necessary. In looking over some ads in a Sunday newpaper, a large number of brands with various features (but not much difference in cost) were offered. The features that seem to make sense to me are: 1. Dual Cassette: rather than a cassette to record the messages and a continuous look to record the outgoing message. 2. Remote Message Retrieval: the one that sounded most interesting to me was the type where you could retrieve your messages from any touch tone telephone (no tone generator box required). Many of them indicated that you could also do other things like play them again, continue recording messages after the last message or rewind the tape and begin recording from the cassette's beginning, etc. 3. Answer the phone after the nth ring: rather than some number which was preset at the factory. 4. Voice Activated Recording: which allows incoming messages to be of variable length. It seemed like many of the machines allow this up to some preset limit to avoid using the entire tape on joker. 5. Variable length outgoing message: This looked pretty standard on most of the dual cassette machines. I gather that after your announcement and the tone, the outgoing cassette just rewinds to the beginning and waits for the next call. 6. Toll Saver: The purpose of this feature is to alert you prior to the machine answering your phone that there have been no new calls recorded since the last time you checked for messages. I don't know how this works but I would guess that the "ring" must somehow be made to sound different. Of course, not having any experience with these things, I may have overlooked features which I do need or added one that is not really beneficial. If you have had any experience with telephone answering machines, I would very much appreciate your help by commenting on: o FEATURES you found useful/necessary (add to or substract from my list). o BRAND NAMES and MODEL NUMBERS which you feel are worth investigating and/or with which you have some experience. o PRICES: which you believe one will pay for such a unit. Please MAIL RESPONSES to me and I will "roll them up" and report back to you. Thanks....Barry
jml@drutx.UUCP (LeonJM) (01/24/86)
My answering machine at home is farily featureless, and I don't really have need for remote, variable length these and those. But, what I'd really like is a time stamp on each message. Many times people have called and asked me to call ASAP and I have no idea when they called. It doesn't help to ask people to include the time in their message because they're so flustered at getting a recording that they don't bother to listen to the message anyway. Anybody know of machines that are capable of time stamping received messages? John Leon AT&T ihnp4!drutx!jml
tim@ism780c.UUCP (Tim Smith) (01/24/86)
>6. Toll Saver: The purpose of this feature is to alert you prior to > the machine answering your phone that there have been no new calls > recorded since the last time you checked for messages. I don't > know how this works but I would guess that the "ring" must somehow > be made to sound different. > Actually, it changes the number of rings it waits before answering. Typically, it will answer on the 4th ring if there are no messages waiting, but on the first ring if there are. Thus, if you call the machine to check messages remotely, and it doesn't answer on the first ring, you know that there are no messages and may hang up, saving the cost of the call. -- Tim Smith sdcrdcf!ism780c!tim || ima!ism780!tim || ihnp4!cithep!tim
ron@brl-smoke.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) (01/28/86)
> 1. Dual Cassette: rather than a cassette to record the messages and a > continuous look to record the outgoing message. Actually, many now just use two standard cassettes. > > 2. Remote Message Retrieval: the one that sounded most interesting to > me was the type where you could retrieve your messages from any > touch tone telephone (no tone generator box required). Many of > them indicated that you could also do other things like play them > again, continue recording messages after the last message or rewind > the tape and begin recording from the cassette's beginning, etc. This comes in several forms. Never did find one that was really adequate. Radio Shack and a couple of others have really nice beeper type control units that let you do a lot. Some touch tone (no-lonter TM) units allow more control than others. Mine for instance allows you to rewind or erase the messages, plus enter a new outgoing message. The problem is that with the exception of the PANASONIC, all the machines I've seen don't decode all the touch tones. Some only do one row (essentially three tones) and some only do one tone. Essentially, this makes it very easy to hack into the machine and pick up or destroy someone else's messages. It also keeps them from assigning all sorts of different features to different buttons. The Panasonic allows you to chose an arbitrary two tone sequence as the password. > 5. Variable length outgoing message: This looked pretty standard on > most of the dual cassette machines. I gather that after your > announcement and the tone, the outgoing cassette just rewinds to > the beginning and waits for the next call. You can't rewind a loop tape. It just plays forward until it gets to the start again, but it's probably about the same amount of time as it would take the normal tape to rewind. > 6. Toll Saver: The purpose of this feature is to alert you prior to > the machine answering your phone that there have been no new calls > recorded since the last time you checked for messages. I don't > know how this works but I would guess that the "ring" must somehow > be made to sound different. Actually, what it does is to wait a longer number of rings before answering if there are no messages. For instance, mine will answer the phone immediately if there are messages waiting, but waits four rings, if there are none. When calling long distance, I only let it ring twice. > o FEATURES you found useful/necessary (add to or substract from my > list). Being able to change the message remotely. Actually, the messages sound better on my machine when you do them over the phone rather than using the microphone that comes with it. I suspect it just picks up too much background noise, including the cassette moters when using the local mike. The other feature that I like is a device that records the date and time on each message. > o BRAND NAMES and MODEL NUMBERS which you feel are worth > investigating and/or with which you have some experience. If you're not paranoid about someone else stealing your messages the Phone Mate with the time stamp has been on sale all over the place for ~120. It also comes in a companion version that includes a phone/ dialer unit. The Panasonic EASYPHONE is the only one that allowed any reasonable level of paranoia. Price was less than $100. -Ron
smh@mhuxl.UUCP (henning) (01/30/86)
**** ****
From the keys of Steve Henning, AT&T Bell Labs, Reading, PA mhuxl!smh
> Actually, many now just use two standard cassettes.
Careful with standard cassettes; they have leaders that cause a dead space
at the beginning. Most answering machines use leaderless cassettes to
avoid a moment of silence on the message and a Nixon on the recording.