ronnie@sos.com (Ron Schnell) (03/30/91)
I was recently in an AT&T Phone Center and saw a new answering machine that they have brought out. It was a completely digital answering machine, and shaped in a '50s art-deco style (more vertical than horizontal), with a LED display on the front. The person who worked there knew nothing about it, and even a friend who works for Ma Bell didn't know much about it. It costs about $129, and would really solve the sleep disturbances caused by my current answering machines clunky sounds. Chris Petrilli Internet: petrilli@gnu.ai.mit.edu Insert silly disclaimer drivel here.
farber@gradient.cis.upenn.edu (David Farber) (03/31/91)
Unless I got a dud, the new AT&T Digital Answering set is an unreliable machine which fails to answer at unpredictable times. Its quality is fair. I would recommend some other, quieter unit.
dave@westmark.westmark.com (Dave Levenson) (03/31/91)
In article <telecom11.254.6@eecs.nwu.edu>, ronnie@sos.com (Ron Schnell) writes: > I was recently in an AT&T Phone Center and saw a new answering machine > that they have brought out. It was a completely digital answering > machine, and shaped in a '50s art-deco style (more vertical than > horizontal), with a LED display on the front. The person who worked > there knew nothing about it, and even a friend who works for Ma Bell > didn't know much about it. It costs about $129, and would really > solve the sleep disturbances caused by my current answering machines > clunky sounds. I can tell you a little about the new AT&T solit-state answering machine: It uses no magnetic tape. Both the greeting and the messages are digitized and stored in semiconductor memory. When you are listening to your messages, you may save or erase individual messages, leaving others. You may listen in any order. It remembers new and old messages, more like AUDIX or other voicemail systems. I'm not sure how much storage it has, but it's far less than cassette-based machines. I think I remember someone telling me that it can take less than ten minutes of messages, if there are no "old" messages saved. There is a battery that maintains the memory in the event of a power outage, but its life is only a few hours. Dave Levenson Internet: dave@westmark.com Westmark, Inc. UUCP: {uunet | rutgers | att}!westmark!dave Warren, NJ, USA AT&T Mail: !westmark!dave Voice: 908 647 0900 Fax: 908 647 6857
rborow@bcm1a09.attmail.com (04/02/91)
Chris Petrilli discussed AT&T's new digital answering machine. Actually, it's not that terribly new, since they were in the stores back in November of '90. I was seriously considering purchasing one (and at our employee discount the price was great :-) ); however, the big drawback for me was that the outgoing message is limited to a maximum one minute in length; and, with the type of business I run out of home, I occasionally must leave outgoing messages of greater than one minute. All in all, though, I was impressed with the machine: remote programmability (even with rotary or pulse phones), voice prompts, time and date stamps, LED message indicator, personal memo feature, auto disconnect (of machine) when picking up any extension, etc. Another tidbit: the machine is tapeless; it uses two digital chips to do its job -- and no, it's not a computerized voice. You can record your own messages. Like Chris said, it's thin: about seven inches tall, one inch thick, and six inches wide and stands vertically. Randy Borow AT&T Communications Rolling Meadows, IL.
nils@ooc.uva.nl (Nils Arbeitstein) (04/03/91)
The new machine is the "Digital Answering System 1337". I saw one the other day at the AT&T store. My brochure states that it has seven minutes of "total recording time". It has an LED which shows the number of messages received. It looks very different from any other answering machine I've seen, but I don't know how well it works. One nice thing about a digital machine is that you can go directly to a specific message without waiting for intervening messages to go by. Jamie Cox jcox@mlb.ess.harris.com | Phone: 1 407 727 6397 (work) Harris Government Aerospace Systems,| 1 407 723 7935 (home) MS 19/4827, P.O. Box 94000, | "Speaking only for myself." Melbourne, Florida USA
rolfs@hpfcdc.fc.hp.com (Mark Rolfs) (04/04/91)
Randy Borow writes: > All in all, though, I was impressed with the machine: remote > programmability (even with rotary or pulse phones), voice prompts, > time and date stamps, LED message indicator, personal memo feature, > auto disconnect (of machine) when picking up any extension, etc. > Another tidbit: the machine is tapeless; it uses two digital chips to > do its job -- and no, it's not a computerized voice. You can record > your own messages. Like Chris said, it's thin: about seven inches > tall, one inch thick, and six inches wide and stands vertically. Either some of your information is in error or there is more than one AT&T digital answering machine available. I bought one recently and am reasonably pleased with it but it does not have voice prompts, time-date stamp, or remote programming via a rotary phone. It does have the rest of the features you mentioned and has a total message capacity of about seven minutes, according to the documentation. Mark Rolfs