Well, time for my two cents. Run away from a 500?? To what?? I've been selling Pana digital since the beginning in '94. I've never NEVER had a customer of mine take a Pana system out to put something else in. They are reliable and very cost competitive and I give them good customer service and support. In my market my main competition is the LEC, Sprint, selling the Norstar. Norstar is a solid system but their phones are not user friendly. A DSS/BLF button is only avail on the top of the line phone (7324) and then it's not a full 24 buttons - program an intercom, handsfree, redial, flash, speed dial, voice call (auto answer) and forward/DND button - that's 17 buttons left for LCD indication of DSS/BLF stations. Display and keypad is a lot smaller on the Norstar. Unless the customer specifies the Norstar, I sell the TD always. I can also service and program the Norstar form the simple 308 to the MICS with a PRI card, I know what I am talking about.
Let's talk about space. I installed a MICS with one 0X16 Trunk Module and 4 Analog Modules, specified for a school bid. That thing took up every bit of four feet of wall space and even more for future expansion. 6 power cords too! Compare that to a 500, about 18" of space with lots of expansion. Norstar analog modules are 8 ports and take one 25 pair AMP cable, sound familiar? Even the big boys are not that efficient, consistency of the install makes it easier for the installer. Let's not forget that Norstar only has one page port and one MOH port per system, Pana 2 EACH!!!! I also work on Avaya (Lucent) Definity, G3i - mostly Hotel systems. Most cards are 16 ports, the older digital 2 wire sets - 8 ports per card. Every card is 25 pair per card, again consistency. Yea, the Definity is king of the hill with programming options for just about anything you can think about, but it also comes with a hefty price. Don't talk about manuals, the Complete Definity Series manual is every bit of 550Mb of a CD in .PDF format. The Definity is necessary for a particular applications and it works great. The Definity has been around a lot longer than the 500 (we won't count the 336), thus a lot more popular to the Fortune 500's. If we could only take some of the best features from each of the most popular systems out there and build the ultimate PBX. Anyone out there want to form a new manufacturing company to produce the most user & tech friendly system? Or how about forming a conglomerate of the big boys and have them work in harmony with us, the installers and of course a group of users who have input of features that they would like to see in a system? I'm willing to start by putting a few bucks in. Until this happens (never), we will just have to make do with what's available on the market. And these user groups will just have to keep the dialog going. Michael Karaman President The Phone Network, Inc. 894-B Elm Street Fayetteville, NC 28303 _________________________________________________________________ KX-T Mailing list --- http://kxthelp.com/ Subscription changes: http://kxthelp.com/mailman/listinfo/kxt
