Phone Answering Machines
Buying Phone Answering Machines
For a lot of people, especially if they’re young, might find themselves wondering why phone answering machines are even necessary. Leaving a message is, after all, just as easy on a cell phone and it is true that most businesses give cell phones to their workers. Even if your job requires you to be at the phone at lot, you probably won’t need an answering machine to begin with since you’ll be there. Despite this, the phone answering machine is far from obsolete. For every business that gives their workers cell phones there are two that can’t afford to upgrade. Whether for business or personal use, it’s important to buy machines that will reliably give your messages.
The GE 29869GE2, while unimaginatively named, is one of the best rated answering machines around. This in large part due to its 40 minute recording time – that’s a lot of messages. It even has a time stamp to back you up if you need to know what order certain messages came in. For people who get a lot of spam messages, this has a 5 second scan option to let you get to the message you want – in short, you can screen what you’ve screened, making this something of a god among phone answering machines. It even has a battery just in case the power cuts out. All in all, it is an extremely reliable machine that you shouldn’t hesitate to arm your home or company with. It costs an average of $35 though, which may affect your decision.
The ATT 1722 on the other hand, only costs less than half that – around $15, which could make the difference. Of course, with this drop in price comes a slight drop in recording length, down to nineteen minutes in fact. It still has power-outage protection in the form of a battery to make sure you get your messages no matter what. Remote access is definitely a plus and a reasonable need considering the purpose of phone answering machines. Two-way recording, unfortunately, wasn’t included as a feature for this machine. Caller ID is also missing. Voice quality might also take a hit, but for the most part its nothing that most people should be concerned with. Its real selling point is its price – at that price, a machine with this many features is a definite steal.
Phone answering machines may no longer be as needed as they were before but they still definitely have a place in the working and home worlds. If you need to buy one, one of the two machines presented above should definitely work for you – if not, it’s relatively easy to find another machine at your local appliance or hardware store.