From: utzoo!decvax!duke!mcnc!ncsu!uvacs!dwm Newsgroups: net.misc Title: Article-I.D.: uvacs.433 Posted: Sat Feb 19 22:27:24 1983 Received: Thu Feb 24 03:13:59 1983 Re: phones I have had a Uniden Extend-a-phone for about nine months, with mixed emotions. As a cordless phone, it works well within about a 50 foot range (*not* 700 feet as claimed by the ads). Although it has a mush-button keypad, it uses those ubiquitous pulses for dialing. Very slow. The ringer produces a warbling tone when someone is calling you; it also warbles in thunderstorms or occasionally when the handset is out of the charging cradle for no apparent reason. The legitimate ringing doesn't bother me anymore though. A thunderstorm last summer seems to have fried the opto-isolator which is used to detect the ring voltage on the phone line. My other two phones (old-fashioned Ma Bell types) survived intact. This susceptibility to lightning and line noise would probably exist on any phone which uses speaker-tone for the bell, since a (fragile) opto-isolator is employed. Now the good part: I love moving from room to room without that nasty cord following me! It's worth it (but keep another phone handy just in case). Dave Methvin