Since my cheap ass house phone gave me nothing but static, and prompted a blow up w/ the Fios installer, I ran out that day and bought another cheap ass house phone. That phone sucked so bad, I went right to eBay to look for another one.
It just arrived.
I figure this should be a good time to buy a phone.
They must have gotten all the kinks out of the system by now. They've been mass producing the guts of these things for years. Economy of Scale must have kicked in by now. They're not going to improve the design ever, so they're not going to get any better than they are right now.
I bet there's a glut of really good phones out there taking up warehouse shelf space.
I already have a nice cordless Panasonic with the base station and the digital answering machine and the crystal clear sound. But I hadn't used it in years and the battery wouldn't hold a charge anymore. A new eBay battery just came in. It needs to charge for at least six hours, so maybe this system will come back to life... or not. We'll see.
But since you can't just plug into a telephone line and make a call, this gets a FAIL.
For a corded phone I found exactly what I wanted on eBay for $18.
It even has 24 selectable ringtones.
It's modern, sleek, sturdy, compact, has big buttons, has Caller ID, works wall mounted or on a desk... and doesn't need batteries. That other one I bought needed batteries to power the Caller ID screen. I shit you not, you plug this thing into 45 Volts DC and they still want you to buy four AA's to power the 3 Volt screen.
Anyways, this one plugs in and works... with CallerID... no additional power required.
So it's a winner, right?
Well, there's always something.
The ringer is just too loud.
24 different ringtones, all loud, and there's no way to lower the volume.
But don't all phones have a ringer volume adjuster switch or knob?
Well... look at a closeup of my "perfect" phone.
They left out the switches for two standard features.
You can see it says "T P" for the Tone-Pulse slider, in case you still use the ancient "rotary" system.
But the plastic is sealed where the switch would be.
OK, fair enough.
But no volume adjuster? It should be there on the left. The volume icon is on the plastic, but no switch or spinner.
Sneaky buggers!! Actively removing a feature I really want!!
I bet the circuit board inside has the ringer volume feature.
I have a soldering iron.
I might have to McGuyver this thing.
