Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!brl-tgr!ron From: ron@brl-tgr.ARPA (Ron Natalie ) Newsgroups: net.consumers Subject: Telephone Answering Machines Message-ID: <10213@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Thu, 25-Apr-85 20:34:42 EST Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.10213 Posted: Thu Apr 25 20:34:42 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 27-Apr-85 05:40:03 EST Distribution: net Organization: Ballistic Research Lab Lines: 38 This was discussed about a year ago, but I never did get any good information. I am looking for a telephone answering machine with the following features: 1. Date and Time that gets announced when I play back the messages remotely. 2. Remote Message playback, preferably beeperless, preferably one that uses touch tones in a sensible way and has a security code that can be changed by the user. 3. The feature that if I pick up the phone from anywhere in the house, the answering machine disconnects. 4. The outgoing message NOT an endless loop cassette. Regular sized cassettes are preferable, but micro cassettes are OK. What I had for a few days is a Record-a-phone. It has feature numbers 3 and 4. It has a simplistic touch tone decoder for the remote (only one row) and the numbers are not changable. Since they use ony one row the codes end up being something like 1-3-2 or 5-6-4. It uses two full sized cassettes, but has the annoying habit of not erasing the outgoing message completely, I have to erase them outside of the machine. It also will record regular phone conversations optionally supplying the 15 second beeper. It also doesn't record the date. To do this, the phone store sold me a wizmo called the "Time Connection." What it does (and this was mis- represented to me when I bought the unit) is sense the beep from the answering machine and then speak the date and time into the phone line. Problem is that the person leaving the message has to wait until Darth Vader gives the date before leaving their message. Problem is, that afte hours of fiddling with this, it won't respond to the Record-a-phone's beep. The same unit will work with other machines, though. Retail price about 40 dollars. It would also be nice to be able to skip automatically to the next message rather than doing a manual fast forward. -Ron