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From: rick@soma.neuro.bcm.tmc.edu (Rick Gray)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: Email VoiceMail Phone
Message-ID: <1000@limbo.Intuitive.Com>
Date: 17 Jul 90 06:27:43 GMT
Sender: taylor@limbo.Intuitive.Com
Organization: Div. of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Tx
Lines: 30
Approved: taylor@Limbo.Intuitive.Com

We have voice mail here at Baylor, and I have been very disappointed
with it (not specifically with the system here; it's probably pretty
good compared to others).  Unlike my cheapo tape answering machine at
home, you can't pause it and back up a few inches to catch a phone
number someone says quickly.  You have to go back to the beginning and
listen to the whole thing over and over until you hit the wrong button
on the phone and erase it by accident.  We also get tons of hangups.

I had hoped I could call a company with a question, leaving it on
their voice mail if necessary, and have them call back with a response
on my voice mail.  It hasn't worked that way at all; I'll get a
message saying so-and-so called, please call back.  A day or two of
telephone tag finally results in the answer such as "What you want is
part number ZT245A and it costs $123.45".  It could have been easily 
left on the machine, but messages like that rarely are.

I greatly prefer email-- I can re-read it as often as I like, file it
away for later reference, or edit it for a reply.  The only problem is
that most companies don't have the technology or knowledge to use
email.

If the voice mail is stored digitally, shouldn't a smart phone switch
be able to transfer the digitized message to a computer with a
voice-quality D/A and speaker (like a NeXT or SparcStation)?  I would
consider that a great product.  Even better would be the additional
ability to reply vocally and have the computer send the message to the
replyee's voice mail system.  I would expect that voice <--> text
translations would be a bit further in the future.

Rick Gray