Hi Tech Help -- Does this phone exist?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

On all the new cell/digital phones, they have the ability (usually) to store about 100 phone #s. Also, there are some home phones that will do this.

Now, here’s what I want. I want a home phone system that will hold a large number of phone numbers(which I know does exist, but here’s the catch), but has some sort of backup process (I’m thinking a memory card, similar to what digital cameras use, although I know it wouldn’t have to be nearly that much storage space) – where once you got all 100 or 500 or however many phone #'s entered with names, you could backup this data, and keep it separate from the phone – so that a lightning touchdown wouldn’t wipe out your data.

I have a free lunch riding on this if I can find one, so I figure I’d ask the dope for some help. If anyone can point me in the right direction, I’ll tell them how good my lunch was.

2

I honestly can’t think of any phone that will do that. I think you are fuck outta luck, chuck. However, you can use an UPS for your phone and computer so that when the power goes out, your phone does not. You can pick one up for a lot cheaper than a 250 dollar telephone, too.

3

I’m not entirely sure, but there are a whole bunch of “network” phones the businesses use (I have one sitting to the right of me, in fact) that do all kinds of neat stuff and are tied into a central network. Now this really means nothing, except for the fact that a number of the options for this phone are controlled through a web site - software installed on our intranet - which leads me to think that there’s a remote chance that numbers could be saved separate from the phone. I wouldn’t bet on it, but you could check the Cisco site for their 7960 IP phone and see what you can find. (I’ve never been a speed dialer, so I’m of limited use to you. Sorry.)

Good luck!

4

A piece of telephone hardware that is capable of backing up its data files to a storage medium. Sounds like a great idea, and if I had gotten a decent response to my thread “Why hasn’t the workstation assimilated the telephone yet?”, we might be that much closer to an answer.

I still wonder why the PC, with everything it can do now, hasn’t assimilated the responsibilities of telphony. You already plug your phone line into it, why not stick a little stubby antenna on top of the monitor & include a 900MHz handset? Then you’d have your address book & phone numbers right there on the hard drive. Something similar to Microsoft’s Phone Dialer in Win95.

Maybe I should print this out & mail it to myself, in case somebody else invents my idea.

5

Hi guys,

I work for a telco (NorthwesTel), and I thought I'd doublecheck for ya.

The kind of phone you're looking for doesn't exist yet. Not with the kind of storage you're looking for, anyways. (He did suggest running your phone through your PC, there is firmware for that . . .)

We can provide something like that for our business customers, via a service called Centrex. With the Centrex service, you have to get a digital phone, which you can either buy or rent from us. :smiley: All the features it has are programmed at the switch level, in the Central Office of the telco. The speeddial list in the Centrex system can handle up to seventy numbers at the moment, improvements occur with every major upgrade.

Since the features are programmed at the switch, lightning can burn your house down and you won’t lose your speeddial list. However, if the telco Central Office burns down, you could be SOL for a couple days.

We don’t offer this as a residential service, as it isn’t cost-effective at residential prices. (We serve um,maybe 70,000 customers over thousands of km[sup]2[/sup]) It is offered as a business service only, due to the cost. However, if you wanted to pay business rates on your home phone, we’d let ya…and then you could have all the goodies.

Hope this helps,
Tisiphone

PS The firmware used to be available from a company called Digital Systems Group, the product was called CallLink, and it was available five or six years ago. DSG is called something else now, but I don’t remember what. There’s likely other vendors and products out there now. Sorry, Attrayant, I didn’t see your thread earlier. Lemme dig, maybe I’ll revive it with new info.

6

You can read a short blurb here on the plans for Bluetooth

There’s supposed to be some phones out this year with the technology, but there are competing technologies being put forth as standards, so that remains to be seen. Bluetooth seems to be the most well-known candidate out there though.