[Asterisk-Users] Best of the best of IP Phones

[Greg Boehnlein]

On Fri, 22 Apr 2005, Chris Coulthurst wrote:
  
> Is there a specific SIP or IAX phone that truly shines above the rest
> where it comes to 'happy' compatibility with Asterisk?  I guess I'm
> talking about feature sets, like early-dial, off hook call announcing,
> conferencing, echo suppression, etc etc..
>  
> I, like many others, bought a Budgetone for early testing, and need some
> new eye candy!
> OHCA is a feature that I'd love to integrate, and it seems that not too
> many phones support it out of the box.

I've got Polycom and Cisco phones and quite frankly, I prefer the Polycom 
Soundpoint IP-500 and 600 to my Cisco's now. All things being equal 
between the phones, the following are why I prefer the Polycoms:

1. Better speakerphone than the Cisco 7960s. Despite the fact that Cisco 
licensed Polycom's SpeakerPhone technology, the SoundPoint IP 500 and 600 
just sound and work better.

2. Lower price point: $185 for a NEW SoundPoint IP 500 is better than the 
$225 I see for used 7960s.

3. FTP based provisioning. TFTP is fine, but doesn't work very well 
through some NAT implementations. The PolyCom's can be centrally 
provisioned from any FTP server, and NAT doesn't seem to be a problem for 
it.

4. More intuitive User Interface. My clients require less training and are 
up and running quicker on the Polycoms.

These are my opinions.... I love BOTH phones, and you can't go wrong with 
either choice, but for my needs the Polcom's work a lot better.

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