ritter@jarsun1.zone1.com (chuck ritter) (06/09/90)
My company is replacing a fifteen year old six button Comkey system because it is maxed out on lines. Our primary requirements are reliability and longevity. We need eight lines and sixteen stations now and don't anticipate explosive growth. Both the AT&T Spirit and Northern Telecom Norstar Meridian systems meet our needs on paper. I know that the Spirit isn't fully digital and the Meridian is; but they are comparably priced - the Merlin II while digital is more importantly substantially more money and has more expansion capacity than I think we'll need in the next several years. My company doesn't (yet) require the all the bells and whistles on either system. But given that our last phone system was used for fifteen years a secondary goal is a system that will allow us to take advantage of new features as they become available locally. I don't expect ISDN in our area for some time despite assurances otherwise. I would like to hear from people who have experience with either system - what are your likes and dislikes in how the system operates? What is your opinion of reliability and service responsiveness? How about voice quality? Ease of use? etc, etc? Chuck Ritter ritter@jarsun1.ZONE1.COM Engineering Consultants Jordan Apostal Ritter Associates ANSYS, Aries, Fidap Distributors Admin Bldg 7, North Kingstown RI 02852 (401) 884-3014 or (401) 294-4589
kaufman@neon.stanford.edu (Marc T. Kaufman) (06/10/90)
In article <8801@accuvax.nwu.edu> ritter@jarsun1.zone1.com (chuck ritter) writes: -My company is replacing a fifteen year old six button Comkey system -because it is maxed out on lines. Our primary requirements are -reliability and longevity. We need eight lines and sixteen stations -now and don't anticipate explosive growth. Both the AT&T Spirit and -Northern Telecom Norstar Meridian systems meet our needs on paper. One of my clients has the Meridian system. I don't know if it's local option or mandatory, but there is NO feedback on button presses. Not DTMF, not even a monotone beep, NOTHING. I find it difficult to dial long distance numbers with the system. Marc Kaufman (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu)
davep@u.washington.edu (David Ptasnik) (06/12/90)
In article 6633 of comp.dcom.telecom, ritter@jarsun1.zone1. com (chuck ritter) writes: >My company is replacing a fifteen year old six button Comkey system >Our primary requirements are reliability and longevity. Both the AT&T >Spirit and Northern Telecom Norstar Meridian systems meet our needs on >paper. they are comparably priced - the Merlin II while digital is >substantially more money and has more expansion capacity The Spirit is not the equal of the Meridian. It is much more cheaply built. Most users I have seen with it are dissatisfied with the quality. The Meridian is on the same toughness level as the Merlin, but appears to be substantially more feature rich than the Merlin. The Merlin lacks such basics as station based call forwarding busy and don't answer. I will admit, though, that I have never been much of a fan of AT&T from a price/value point of view. I think that there are many better deals and systems out there. You might also consider an Inter-Tel system (also marketed as the Premier, same mfg. but sold thru supply houses). This would be more equivalent to the spirit, and would probably cost less. davep@cac.washington.edu
chip@uunet.uu.net (Chip Salzenberg) (06/14/90)
I used to work at A T Engineering. While I was there, we replaced a piece of junk from GTE with a Meridian PBX. We all loved it. It never gave us any trouble. We especially liked the ability to program the keys quickly according to personal preference. Note: Be sure to get the hands-free sets. I used to have long conversations with a co-worker using the "voice call" feature. He smoked and I didn't like the smoke, so we ended up talking a lot more that way than we would otherwise have done. Chip, the new t.b answer man <chip@tct.uucp>, <uunet!ateng!tct!chip>
hwt@uunet.uu.net (Henry Troup) (06/15/90)
Warning: I work for a subsidiary of Northern Telecom, but this is not an official statement. One must be careful to qualify which 'Meridian' NT product one is talking about. The word 'Meridian' is now applied from the smallest SL-1 (100 lines ?) to the full blown SL-100 (potentially 100,000 lines). Norstar is a recent small PBX, very technically advanced, with much attention to user interface and self-configuration (really!). It does voice and data, using an 'ISDN-like' 2B+D channel structure. I'm afraid I can't find an office in Iceland. Henry Troup BNR owns but does not share my opinions. ..uunet!bnrgate!hwt%bwdlh490 or HWT@BNR.CA