[TriLUG] Asterisk for the office

[Ken Mink]

On 11/13/06, Brian Henning <brian at strutmasters.com> wrote:
> I've been in touch with people at CDW, where we buy some of our
> enterprise-grade stuff (when we do buy such things).  They don't seem to
> offer the Cisco 79x0 phones, but their "telephony expert" suggested the
> Polycom 501/601 phones, as units that are reasonably easy to use and
> work well with Asterisk.  Does anyone have comments to make in favor or
> against the Polycom models?
>

I did an asterisk project for my former employer. We rolled out about
15 phones and set up the server with 4 standard POPS lines. We went
with Polycom IP500 phones. I liked the phones. They were fairly easy
to configure. Most come with SIP preinstalled. The sound quality was
good and they're significantly cheaper than the Cisco phones. They
also came with AC/DC bricks.

The downside I ran into is that Polycom doesn't support them directly.
We bought ours from a small online reseller. You have to go to an
'authorized' reseller, which our source wasn't, when you have a
problem. Asterisk seemed to be a dirty word to Polycom. This was about
2 years ago. I don't know how things are now.

Ken

> Cheers,
> ~Brian
>
<SNIP>


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