Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: bet@orion.mc.duke.edu (Bennett Todd) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Phone Design For Humans Message-ID:Date: 28 Sep 89 15:10:02 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Reply-To: bet@orion.mc.duke.edu (Bennett Todd) Organization: Diagnostic Physics, Radiology, DUMC Lines: 48 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 415, message 4 of 5 In-reply-to: dsacg1!dlscg1!drms3002@cis.ohio-state.edu (Andy Meijers) If our experience is any indicator, there is little hope for improvement in telephone instrument design. What happened here is that AT&T representatives wooed senior administrators; when time came to replace our old key system, which worked wonderfully but was at the limits of its capacity and couldn't be expanded, there was no technical evaluation of phone systems. We ended up getting some AT&T gee-whiz system with LEDs and whatnot. The telephones have to get wall power to work, insofar as they work at all, which is mostly not. This is lovely when you want to call to report that the power is out. The human engineering is pathetic. The system is constantly enjoying "software glitches" which prevent phones from ringing when they are called, or spontaneously trigger some kind of forwarding without illuminating the forwarding indicator. I don't have any reason to believe that AT&T weasles couldn't grease in to enough other organizations the same way to make for a profitable business. I'm pretty sure I understand the precise reasons for the design changes; the new phones offer the following benefits: 1. They charge disproportionately much for them. 2. They are more fragile than the older ones -- which means that they will have to be replaced sooner. 3. The poor fools who actually have to *use* the damned things loathe them, so when the weasles come along and sell management on a whole new replacement system in two or three years, there won't be anything like the complaints that rang through the office when the old key system with the old massive phones was taken out. Equipment lifetimes of several decades aren't so good for repeat sales. However, this isn't all to our loss. I used to think that having a telephone was really important. I have been cured of this belief. Between GTE and AT&T, I don't particularly worry about being hard to reach by phone at work, and impossible at home. -Bennett bet@orion.mc.duke.edu [Moderator's Note: But Bennett, if it weren't for your phone -- or someone's phone -- how would you receive this Digest each day? Even though you are not enamored of voice telephony, apparently the use of the Devil's Instrument for data transmission passes muster with you, eh? PT]