[Asterisk-Users] Where to buy POLYCOM phones?

[Tim Donahue]

On Mon, 2004-10-18 at 12:54, Paul Dugas wrote:
> Jonathan Miller said:
> > Does anyone know a good place to buy polycom phones?
> 
> Got an IP500 for $165 with shipping a couple weeks back from
> www.pagecomputers.com.  Looking now, they're back ordered.  I'll likely be
> buying 6 or 8 more from them in a week.
> 
> Only hitch so far is that I had to get the firmware updates and example
> config files for my boot server from another source as these guys appear
> not to have access to Polycom's site for such things.  Have I mentioned
> how much I hate being a small business having to deal with the Ciscos and
> Nortels of the world?  May be adding Polycom to the list soon.  Their
> products are great but access to support for us little guys stinks.
> 
> Paul

All I can say about Polycom and Cisco, is that dealing with Cisco is
MUCH easier than dealing with Polycom for the updates for their phones. 
I chased my tail for a couple days before I found a place where I could
get the firmware.  I find it kind of funny that all of the "Polycom
Certified whatever they are", seem to be selling their own VoIP solution
and don't want to just sell the phones.  It really irks me that these
are the only people who can get the firmware from Polycom's site...

At least with Cisco they have made their policy very clear for getting
the firmware for the phones.  Buy the phone, get a SmartNet contract,
then you can get the firmware.  Oh, and as the end user I can actually
get the firmware myself once I have that SmartNet.

Tim Donahue