Hangups About Cordless Phones
The wonderful thing about a cordless telephone is that you don't have to be right next to the phone cradle to talk. The evil, wicked, mean, bad and nasty thing about the cordless phone is that you also don't have to be next to the cradle to hang up. So, more likely than not, the handset gets laid down next to wherever the talker happened to be when the conversation ended. Which typically is not even in the same room as the cradle.
So then you hear the phone ringing, or perhaps you hear only the base station ringing, or maybe you just see a Caller ID alert come up on the TV screen. But any of those will prompt a frantic scramble and "Where's the *#&@%* phone?!"
Sure, you can locate the handset anytime by going back to the base unit and hitting the "page" button, then try to find the source of the beeps. But sometimes the echos make it almost as hard as finding the source of a cricket chirp, especially given that the beeping tends to stop just as you are getting warm on the source.
Well, not quite anytime: paging the handset only works if you happen to do it before the handset runs out of battery power. Since it usually spends more time off the charging cradle than on it, the battery life is rather limited.
We have one of those Motorola MD481 systems with a main base station and multiple remote charging cradles that simply extend the one base station to several cordless handsets rather than having multiple systems. It's a fine product, as cordless phones go, and we theoretically have four phones operating from a single base. I say "theoretically" because one of the handsets went missing more than six months ago.
Where is it? Fallen between couch cushions somewhere? Who knows? Since most of the charging cradles sit vacant much of the time, it never occurred to anyone that we were short a handset until the battery power was far diminished beyond any capability to respond to a page. Maybe it will turn up someday.
I've many times threatened to throw away all our cordless phones and replace them with good ol' tied-down models. Even though phone cord tangles can be irritating, at least you always know where the phone is.
Okay, here's what I really want: Give me a cordless phone that doesn't act like a cordless phone. I want to see a handset that has nothing visible on it but a microphone and an earphone. No buttons, no display, nothing else. Just like a simple corded handset, but without the irritating tangly part.
Most cordless phones automatically pick up if you remove them from the base while they are ringing, and automatically hang up when you return them to the base. On the phone I want, this is the only way to answer or hang up, because the handset has no buttons to perform the task. When you finish a conversation, you simply have to return the handset to the base, because until you do, the base will remain online unless you actually unplug it from the phone jack.
Suddenly, like magic, you don't have handsets that go missing because they fell behind the couch cushions in the next room. And you don't have handsets that die in mid-conversation because they've been away from the charger for the past three days.
Sure, the MD481 has a number of nice features. But I could use those features at the base station; I don't need them on the handset. Is this a move backwards? Certainly no more than running all over the house for a locatable working phone.
So then you hear the phone ringing, or perhaps you hear only the base station ringing, or maybe you just see a Caller ID alert come up on the TV screen. But any of those will prompt a frantic scramble and "Where's the *#&@%* phone?!"
Sure, you can locate the handset anytime by going back to the base unit and hitting the "page" button, then try to find the source of the beeps. But sometimes the echos make it almost as hard as finding the source of a cricket chirp, especially given that the beeping tends to stop just as you are getting warm on the source.
Well, not quite anytime: paging the handset only works if you happen to do it before the handset runs out of battery power. Since it usually spends more time off the charging cradle than on it, the battery life is rather limited.
We have one of those Motorola MD481 systems with a main base station and multiple remote charging cradles that simply extend the one base station to several cordless handsets rather than having multiple systems. It's a fine product, as cordless phones go, and we theoretically have four phones operating from a single base. I say "theoretically" because one of the handsets went missing more than six months ago.
Where is it? Fallen between couch cushions somewhere? Who knows? Since most of the charging cradles sit vacant much of the time, it never occurred to anyone that we were short a handset until the battery power was far diminished beyond any capability to respond to a page. Maybe it will turn up someday.
I've many times threatened to throw away all our cordless phones and replace them with good ol' tied-down models. Even though phone cord tangles can be irritating, at least you always know where the phone is.
Okay, here's what I really want: Give me a cordless phone that doesn't act like a cordless phone. I want to see a handset that has nothing visible on it but a microphone and an earphone. No buttons, no display, nothing else. Just like a simple corded handset, but without the irritating tangly part.
Most cordless phones automatically pick up if you remove them from the base while they are ringing, and automatically hang up when you return them to the base. On the phone I want, this is the only way to answer or hang up, because the handset has no buttons to perform the task. When you finish a conversation, you simply have to return the handset to the base, because until you do, the base will remain online unless you actually unplug it from the phone jack.
Suddenly, like magic, you don't have handsets that go missing because they fell behind the couch cushions in the next room. And you don't have handsets that die in mid-conversation because they've been away from the charger for the past three days.
Sure, the MD481 has a number of nice features. But I could use those features at the base station; I don't need them on the handset. Is this a move backwards? Certainly no more than running all over the house for a locatable working phone.
Labels: Pet peeves
posted by Steve | 10:18 AM
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1 comments
