74066.2004@compuserve.com (Larry Rachman) (11/08/89)
Recent comments on the topic of residential/small business PBXs have
encouraged me to share my experience with the Panasonic KX-T61610.
I installed one here about 6 months ago (replacing a two year old
KXT-616) and have found it to be *wonderful*. The nicest feature is
that you can freely mix and match propriatary Panasonic keyphones and
ordinary single line stations, without any special hardware or
configuration. The feature/key phones use the second cord pair to pass
key and lamping information between the station and the PBX; if the
PBX looks for the data and can't find it, it assumes you've attached a
plain phone.
I operate my business from my home, so its handy to be able to
configure for the house line to ring everywhere *but* the office, and
for the office lines to ring only in the office, but for everything to
be answerable everywhere. If the kids ever beat an 85% average,
they'll get extensions, and I'll have a chance to use the toll
restriction and SMDR capabilities.
You need at least one proprietary featurephone to configure the
system, which is done through the station keyboard and LCD screen. You
can dump the entire configuration to the SMDR printer for easier
reading, or archiving.
Between the phones, modems, fax, and so forth, I'm using 12 of the 16
station ports. I'm sure that the rest will find homes fairly soon. At
(New York Telephone) Centrex rates, the switch pays for itself every 6
month or so, and I get both Key and PBX features!
TeleCom Products (somewhere in California: 1-800-888-PHON) will ship
one of these for about $650 (or its little brother, the KXT30810, for
about $375). Tell them you're a phone store, and ask for the catalog.
-Larry Rachman
[--I don't own or work for either Panasonic or TeleCom -- my
only relationships with these firms are the usual 'Capitalist
acts between consenting adults'.]