CyberGenie PC Telephony?
Geoff Shepherd
weeks now and it has been bittersweet. We expected some rough spots
given it's basically version 1.0 right now.
We have the base station and five handsets. All five handsets have been
replaced by Cygnion with second revision hardware. The first revision
handsets had problems with the headset jack getting stuck.
Only three of the five new handsets are working well. One will not
charge and seems to have faulty contacts. The other will not display
its assigned name and extension on the LCD display. I've alerted
Cygnion to these new problems, and I'm awaiting a response.
Voice recognition works surprisingly well most of the time. It's that
"some-of-the-time" that it frustratingly misinterprets commands or
people's names. Voice synthesis is somewhat muffled and hard to
understand at times.
You can listen to voice mail on the computer by opening up the Windows
Messaging program in the start menu. You can also listen in to voice
mail as people leave them by using the CyberGenie console.
It is easy to transfer calls between handsets, but not easy to have
additional extensions pick up the line for a shared conference.
If you PC controlling CG goes down, the system switches to "stand-
alone" mode so you can still make and answer calls, but advanced
features become unavailable.
We have quite a "wish list" going that we will send to Cygnion at some
point. Most of our wishes could be accomodated, I'm sure, with
software upgrades. Despite the problems, it's been a huge improvement
over our old 2-line desk phones, and we'll hang on and hope it only
gets better. We've received much positive feedback from our customers
calling in.
I recommend giving it a try, but make sure you can return the system
after a reasonable amount of time to live with it.
Geoff
In article <telecom...@telecom-digest.org>, mpal...@yahoo.com
(M. Palmer) wrote:
> I've tried both and found the Gigaset more practical than Cybergenie.
> However I've had problems with both:
> Gigaset:
> Sometimes when a call comes in I attempted to answer it and got the
> message: "No channel available". I always lost the call. No one was
> using any other handsets at the time. Siemens suggested I "re-boot"
> the system. It didn't help, so I ended up returning the system.
> Transferring calls between handsets is a pain.
> Operating range is poor compared to other cordless phones, even 900MHz
> phones.
> Cybergenie:
> Handsets don't always ring or show Caller ID info.
> Voice mail must be played through the handset - why can't it play
> through the computer?
> Needs a computer that's on all the time for most functionality.
> Operating range is poor compared to other cordless phones, even 900MHz
> phones.
> It too is going back to Office Depot tomorrow.
> If you buy, make sure you can return if not satisfied.
> In article <telecom...@telecom-digest.org>, Paul Robichaux
> <pa...@robichaux.net> wrote:
>> Office Depot is showing a product from Cygnion (www.cygnion.com)
>> called the "CyberGenie" phone. I'm shopping for a new SOHO phone and
>> had pretty much settled on the GigaSet 2420 from Siemens. Does anyone
>> have hands-on experience with the CyberGenie? I'm particularly
>> interested in how well the "advanced" features work.
>> Cheers,
Geoff Shepherd