tim@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (Timothy L. Kay) (02/09/88)
We've been having problems with our netnews disk. It just came
back up and tells me that I have 13,209 unread articles in
comp.sys.ibm.pc alone! Please forgive me if I have missed part
of a discussion here or there.
Recently someone posted an article about Watson and its new, low
price of $199. Watson is a card that plugs into a PC and answers
the phone. It stores the messages on disk, and (it is claimed)
will allow you to do voice mail.
There is an 800 number which gives a demonstration of what Watson
can do. Unfortunately, the demo is of their $400 product, not
the $200 product. You can upgrade the $200 product to the $400
version for $300 (?!?). It involves a change in one PROM and software.
I ordered their $200 product. What follows is a summary of my
impressions and a list of the problems I am having.
Basically, I find the hardware to be very exceptional. The quality
of the recording is superb. Also, the machine used as a dictation
machine or autodialer is great. Recording and playing messages while
sitting in front of the keyboard is terrific. However, the machine's
fatal flaw is that it does a poor job of interacting with a user at
the other end of the telephone.
The manual, is very poorly written. Nevertheless, I am amazed at what
the product can do. You can leave an outgoing message that
instructs the caller to type something to leave a message
for one person and something else to leave a message for another
person. There is no logical limit to the number of users you
can have. However, messages eat up disk space at the (selectable)
rate of 1, 1.5, 2, 3, or 4 kilobytes per second, trading off economy
of disk usage versus quality of recording.
So, I put it to the test....only to find that there are bugs in
the program. I called and left myself a message. When I called
back and identified myself, I was told that there was one message.
It refused to play the message, but asked if I wanted to erase all
messages? I called and left another message. When I called back,
it correctly told me that there were two messages. But, it would
only play the second one. As far as I can tell, I can't get it
to play the first message.
Suppose I call to receive my messages, and there are no messages. I
get "No messages" followed by a beep. It starts recording! So you
hang up, and the machine records a blank, very short message. The
software doesn't eliminate blank, very short messages, either.
As for outsiders directing mail to a particular individual, it is
too complicated. The outgoing message has to say, "Press #19 to
leave a message for Tim, or press #29 to leave a message for
Rajiv." When the caller does this they hear "9 yes." followed by a beep.
Why couldn't they have implemented, "Press 1 for Tim, 2 for Rajiv?"
To be fair, I must explain that there are two modes in which to use
Watson. One assumes that there is only one "user." In this mode, there
don't seem to be too many bugs. However, you don't get to take advantage
of Watson's voice mail capability, and you would be just as well off
with an expensive answering machine. The other mode ("multiuser mode")
enables the caller to direct a message to an individual. Then you get
into all the bugs I mentioned.
If I sound down on this product, it is because the hardware that they
deliver has soooooo much potential. However, I don't feel like paying
another $200 for just ROMs and software. I am going to send this
back and order The Complete PC's version of voice mail for $349. It
looks just as promising, and maybe it doesn't have the bugs. I'll
review that package after I have played with it for a while.
I am convinced after using Watson that personal voice mail is possible
and very useful. If there is a good implementation out there, I'd say
that everybody should have it.
Tim