Full Review

I'm a cheapskate, you know this- but this thing has been very convenient, although expensive addition to my home office so far. But when you count up the cost of all the things it replaces then its not so bad a deal.

While shopping for a new answering machine and telephone after mine got fried, in Sept 2002 I came across this cool but expensive thing at Best Buy for 199.00. It's a fax, answering machine with multiple mailboxes, caller id, corded phone, cordless phone, speaker phone, intercom system, single sheet copier in one box.

The printing is done using that mimeograph sheet type material the teachers used to use to duplicate stuff before laserjet printers were widely available. Very low tech, but ok for general text copies, and receiving text fax doc's which is what I wanted it for. If I need to receive a high res doc then whomever is sending it can email it and I can print it on the laserjet.

If I could have found a similar unit with all these features that had cordless phone and was a laser jet fax/copier for a similar price I would have gotten it instead, but I could not at the time.

My favorite feature is the phone/fax answering machine auto switching. the phone rings, the machine picks up, if its voice it records, if its a fax it switches and receives the fax. If I accidentally pick up on the 2.4 Ghz cordless and it's a fax I just press transfer then hang up and it switches to fax. If it's out of paper by chance it stores the fax in memory until you add some.

Another nice touch is the cordless and 2.4 Ghz corded phone can intercom each other, and you can also transfer the call back and forth from the corded phone to the cordless phone.

You can add handsets as needed to outfit the whole house or small office.

This thing will be prove to be a really good value if it last about 5 years, if not, maybe not so good since you need the fax unit to operate the phone, so if the main unit goes, there goes your whole phone system. I have it on a surge protector now that guarantees replacement if lightning or surge so I feel good about its chances for survival.