Phone System Upgrade (?)
I’m in the midst of replacing a 2-line Siemens Gigaset 8825 with a 1-line Panasonic KX-TG1063 and an XLink BTTN Bluetooth Gateway.
The Gigaset has been a great phone. The base unit is in my office, and we have satellite phones positioned around the house. It’s been configured to ring only base unit for line one (my office number) and to ring all handsets for line 2 (our home number). The only issue that we’ve had with it is that the microwave interferes with reception of the wireless handhelds.
However, the LCD screen has been gradually degrading, such that now only the bottom two-thirds of any phone number is shown, and the answering machine has recently stopped working altogether. Interestingly, it gives you (the caller) the impression that it is working, but it isn’t.
I’ve opted to replace it with a 1-line phone, and will probably request that the phone company disconnect my office line. Thus, the Panasonic purchase. I opted for a phone with a handset so that my Plantronics headset can still be used with it.
Since I’ll use my cell phone as my primary business line, I looked for a base phone unit that would connect to the cell phone via bluetooth. There are some available, however, the various options didn’t meet my other requirements. So, instead, I’ve opted to try an add-on unit (the XLink) that will pair the cell phone with the base unit, allowing the cell phone to be used from any handset. It should work well for incoming calls, though outgoing calls may still require that the phone be “on” and “unlocked”. Another advantage of the XLink is that it will let me see what home service is like with a cell phone instead of a land line.
So, is it an upgrade, or not? I’m going from two land lines and one cell line to one land line and one cell line, but am connecting the cell line to the phone system so that it behaves (mostly) like a land line when within range of the base. I think I’ll like it. Economically, it will take 6 months or so to hit the break-even point, where the savings from removing the second land line will pay for the new equipment. After that, there will be monthly savings. So, it seems to be an economic upgrade.
Practically, even though I’m switching from two land lines to just one, I think it will work just fine. So, I might not call it an upgrade, but it isn’t a step backwards either.
But geekly, it’s a huge upgrade!
January 17th, 2011 at 11:57 pm
We too are interested in the Panasonic KX-TG1063, and for the same reason– we need a handset with a jack / plug-in for a headset. Today, few other home cordless phone systems offer a headset jack for each handset–VTech, our previous model, no longer provides one, and that critical omission led us to drop VTech from consideration.
Quality headsets make a huge difference in spatial “presence” during a phone conversation, and are especially important to contact between parents/grandparents and children. The voice quality on our headset, a Philips SHM3300 unit intended for use with a PC, is vastly superior to an ordinary phone microphone because of its full-range, sensitive pickup and windscreen. Familiar voice tones come through faithfully, and extraneous noise (background TV or conversations) are minimized or entirely absent, further enhancing sound quality.
At this point, since we have not bought the Panasonic unit yet, we are not sure the Philips headset (3.5mm plug) will work properly (or even plug into) the Panasonic headset jack. As we discovered earlier with the VTech, something so “obvious” as a headset jack working with any headset cannot be taken for granted. Best advice– try before you buy. Plug in the headset you like to the KX-TG1063 and verify in the first few days all works as needed.