[Asterisk-Users] IP Phone that OFFICIALLY support Asterisk

[Christopher L. Wade]

Jim Van Meggelen wrote:
> 
> Can you imagine!?! That would be the most brillant thing they could do!
> They should also open up their platform so people can port Linux, BSD
> and what-all-else to it. Oh, and drop the price a bit while their at it!
> 
> The whole Linksys/Linux/Cisco thing really fascinates me. The things
> people are doing with the Linksys routers must have a lot of Cisco
> people wondering what the future is going to look like.
> 
> And as for Call Manager? I predict that they will be officially
> Asterisk-compliant in . . . hmmm . . . I'll say roughly five years or
> so. Possibly far sooner if they yank their heads out of their asses and
> grab a clue. Asterisk is destined to do for telecom what Linux did for
> the OS. In five years, many big names will be waving the Asterisk flag
> in the exact same way they are with Linux. Mark my words.
> 
> 
> 
> I keep wondering what would hapen if Microsoft were to OS the whole
> Windows platform. That'd change everything, eh?
> 

[falls asleep and starts dreaming...]

Could you image Digium (or anyone else up to the challenge) making an OS 
phone!  I know this is counter to the whole idea of not being locked to 
a particular vendor for your phones (part of the point of *), but I 
would still love the idea of a phone with *very* high quality at the 
hardware level, that exposes _as much as possible_ to the "end user".  I 
know this is basically asking someone to create a computer with a 
headset/speaker/microphone and make it look like a phone, but... oh how 
sweet it would be.

[entering even deeper sleep state...]

Your boss walks up to you and says he needs the phones to do this fancy 
new thing he just heard about somebody else's system being able to do. 
Worse yet, he wants a 'soft-key' for it!  No problem, edit the source 
code to the firmware for the phone, add the required code to make the 
phone do it.  What's this, * doesn't support the required stuff at the 
other end, just write an app, put it somewhere, and bam, the whole thing 
works.

[starting to come to reality, not quite there yet...]

At this point, unless your boss simply wants nicer hardware (color touch 
screen lcd for example), or you finally hit the limitation of the 
hardware of the phone, you will _never_ need to buy another phone.

[wakes up from dream]

Huh?

-- 
Christopher L. Wade                     Unistar-Sparco Computers, Inc.
Senior Systems Administrator                            dba Sparco.com
Email: clwade at sparco.com                             7089 Ryburn Drive
Phone: (901) 872 2272 / (800) 840 8400            Millington, TN 38053
Fax:   (901) 872 8482                                              USA