[Asterisk-Users] advantages of a sip phone over Wildcard TDM400P solution

[Andy Powell]

>Hi,
>after finally getting my testsystem to work well I'm planning to buy
>some hardware. Now I was wondering what the advantages / disadvantages
>of using a Wildcard TDM400P solution over using real sip phones like the

SIP phones are expensive, analog phones are not. You can in fact get yourself
wireless VOIP if you use DECT phones (are you in Europe?)  which is what I
do.. when using a TDM400P card. Analog phones tend bo be a little more comfortable
to use, even the cheapest analog phone feels better than your average SIP phone.


>snoms is? The only thing I came up with is that the Snoms can use a LDAP
>adressbook on the server. 


Sorry, but Snom have REMOVED this feature! They haven't taken the time 
to update any of their sales literature either. I purchased my Snoms because
they said that they could use LDAP. IT IS NO LONGER TRUE!!!


>What about calling a sip adress like
>person at server.com. Can this be done by dialing the adress on the sip
>phone or do I still have to add the adress to the extentions.conf  and
>then dial the corresponding number on the snom? Is there a way to dail
>sip adresses when using a TDM400P?


dialing any sort of SIP address on either a Snom or analog phone is 
a PITA!  What I tend to do is set up extensions in extensions.conf
so I can short dial people I regularly call for example:

exten => 4002,1,Dial,SIP/keith at sip.address.com

I just dial 4002 to ring Keith. Many analog phones have address books
too, which means you could use them if you can't remember the numbers.

Before I started using asterisk I just used the snom internal web page to dial.

>If you have any hints on what hardware to buy or what to watch out for
>please let me know! Thanks in advance!

It really depends where you live, can you give us a region? For instant
wireless VOIP use DECT - I use DECT and love it. 

TBH, SIP phones are expensive, if you are just starting out a TDM400P
with a couple of ports and some analog phones would be a cheaper option.
or get the DEV KIT Lite, (X100P and TDM10B (you can buy extra ports for
the TDM at the same time and save a little) card) which will allow you to make
both VoIP calls and standard pstn calls...

My advice at the moment is unless you can find a cheap SIP phone get a TDM
card and analog phone.. I've searched around and the most expensive analog corded 
phone I can find is about 30GBP compared to a price of about 140GBP for a Snom 100.
A twin DECT system (2 phones and 1 base station) can be had for less that the price
of a single Snom 100... 

If you get the feeling that I'm starting to rant, it's because I am, I'll stop now...


HTH

Andy