What can it do again?

Author's Rating:

Pros: Ease of use, caller ID, and easy to use menus

Cons: Using the internet is not always the best thing

The Bottom Line: 
Not being a "tech-head" I don't know the complexities of them phone, but for an average user, I'd reccommend it.

Author's Review
For my job as a teacher, instead of using an intercom to communicate with anyone on the campus, we use the Cisco IP Phone 7940. This is one model in a wave of new types of phones that, instead of using traditional phone lines, use your IP addresses to make calls.

Like a traditional phone, the 7940 can do what you would expect - send and recieve calls, voice mail, and even caller ID (names for inter-office calls, numbers for outside calls). I really enjoy the caller ID function as I now can tell who is calling me or, even, who my students might be calling (to make sure they call who they say they are). Another nice feature, like cell phones, will let you know if you missed a call (and who it was), calls you've made, calls you've recieved, and it even has a corporate directory, so if you need to look up someone's number, you can.

The phone has many settings - you can change volume, change the ringers, brightness, security features, and even its status. It has a help button in case you don't know what something does, it will try to help you. Sometimes it's handy, other times it just gets confusing.

More features it has is one touch voice mail retrieval, so you don't need to call a new number for voice mail, speaker phone, you can get a headset for it and a mute button. It constantly displays the date and time too, which is always handy to have. When it rings, there is also a couple lights that go on and if you have voice mail that same light will stay on to let you know.

One disadvantage to being an IP phone is that, if you're internet goes down, so does your phone. This could happen for any reason but, with traditional phones, if you lose your internet, you normally can still make phone calls. Also, if the power goes out, you can no longer use it, which could be a disadvantage in an emergancy situation.

This is my first experience using an IP phone and I've enjoyed. It gives me security and ease of use. I just make office-to-office calls mainly and the occasional long-distance call, so for my purposes it is fine.