Okay, so I'm on an electronics buying spree lately. My latest quest is to find a cordless phone that has Caller ID Announce. This is where, not only does it display the incoming caller's number, but can either speak the number aloud, or can play a pre-recorded sound recording like "it's Mom calling" or whatever.

So far I've found a couple units from Siemens in the $150+ range, a little higher than I was planning on going. They are 2.4 GHz and have digital answering machines, neither of which I need. I've also read reviews which suggest the volume of the caller ID announce is way too soft, which defeats the whole purpose.

Anyway a roomate of mine in college had a 900 MHz model that had this feature, and it was really nice. After the first ring, you could hear who was calling without answering. So you don't have to run for the phone to figure out if it's worth picking up. Anyway, I have tried to find one like it and haven't been able to. I can't remember hwo made it or even what it looked like. (Yes, college was a blur.)

So I was thinking someone out there might have run across one of these and be able to suggest a model. Or any other experiences with phones with this feature. I have come across stand-alone caller ID units with this audible feature in the $80 range, which is a backup plan if I can't find a good phone that does it.

My favorite phone of all time, now discontinued, is the Microsoft Cordless Phone. It has voice recognition to do voice dial, it has caller id announce in any choice of voices, speeds and volumes. The phone shows up as an audio device and a standard type of audio input device under windows so you can play back sounds into it, or record from it. All the answering machine messages are stored digitally as wavs, and you could retrieve them at any time via an interactive voice response system, you could organize multiple mailboxes, all sorts of cool stuff. It came out years and years ago but was advanced for its day. THe hardware is logically designed so that the phone-line base station is hooked up to the computer, and the charger is a separate unit that can be plugged into any outlet without regard to the actual bigger base station.

I'm still using the phone hardware today, but the drivers are not XP compatible. Anybody know of an equivalent type of cordless???

Calvin

I picked up a 2.4GHz with caller ID not too long ago for $48 dollars, and it works great. I live in a large apartment complex and my old cordless wouldnt even work 10 ft from the base and this one I could walk to the other side of the complex and still be talking fine. Im not sure what brand it is though, i will have to look later

I am the king of cordless phones. In my experience you should stay away from the following brands:

• Uniden - Poor range
• Sony - Poor reliability

Some of the brands I endorse:

• Panasonic
• Sanyo
• VTech - Poor build quality, but they do work and are very cheap
• Southwestern Bell and GE sometimes seem the same. They work but are nothing special.

Currently I use a Panasonic KX-TC1733B (900MHz) and Sanyo 900MHz DSS phone most often. The Panasonic is great if you call customer service lines because it has speakerphone on the handset. I don't have to hold the phone to my ear anymore while on hold. I think I bought it for $79. That feature makes it worth every penny.

The Sanyo phone is excellent. I bought it refurbished for $35. It can go farther than the Panasonic and a 2.4GHz phone I used to have. Battery lasts long.

Ack, Rob, being the king of cordless phones, can you fill me in on which ones might have the Caller ID Announce feature I mentioned? I'd like the phone to speak the name and/or number of the caller before I run into my kitchen to answer it.

I'll take your brand advice though... Come to think of it, any time I have a question about a piece of technology, I'll just email you directly.. You probably have three or four of whatever I'm asking about buried somewhere on your dining room table!

I don't have everything. Just lots of phones and computer stuff.

Anyway, I have never seen the announce feature built into a phone. I have only seen it as a seperate box usually available at Radio Shack. I am looking to get a box that has a big LED (not LCD) display like this one. I figure I could put it on top of my TV and see it at 6 feet away. There are also solutions that superimpose caller ID info into your video signal so it shows up on your TV. I don't want to do this as it will probably degrade the picture qualtiy.

Here's a link to RS's talking caller ID box. By the way, I have started clearing out some of my stuff. The tax man hasn't been nice this year. I am going to start posting a couple things a day until it's all gone. Check me out on eBay.

Anyone with a talking unit want to post a sample of what it sounds like. That almost sounds like a better idea than the huge display type depending on what it sounds like.

Anyone with a talking unit want to post a sample of what it sounds like

Well there are two flavors of this caller ID announce feature I've seen. There is something like this phone which uses text-to-speech to "sound out" the name (maybe and/or the number?) of the caller. I don't like that because names are difficult for text-to-speech programs to get right.

The other, and I think more simple implementation, is to just have a recorded sound sample that plays for certain callers you care about. Then anyone else gets their *number* announced. I like that one. I've seen a phone that worked that way but it's probably discontinued now. There's a Siemens 2.4 GHz model (4210 maybe? can't remmeber) which has something along the lines of what I'm looking for, and that might be my best bet right now unless I can find a better, cheaper alternative.

I'm currently using this Siemens model, and I absolutely LOVE it. It has a great range, the batteries last for hours (never been able to use up the total battery capacity - and I sometimes call for HOURS), it does caller-ID just fine and it does hands-free calling. Nowadays I rarely call with the phone to my head, it's always standing on my desk. The beauty of this phone's hands free is that the caller on the other side really doesn't even notice if your hands free or not. You don't have to shout at it. Something I can't say about the previous model I owned, the Loewe Aphatel 4000DE. Man, what a piece of crap that was. The batteries only lasted for two hours and if the phone wasn't in it's charger they drained completely in a matter of 1 hr. Also the hands-free option was complete crap, as was the range of the thing. Stay away from these phones...

Let me elaborate on Rob's recommendations:

I had a Southwestern Bell cordless for a long time. It was pretty good, although I kept having to clean the buttons. They weren't properly sealed, so grease from your fingers would get in there and cause the buttons to not work right.

I currently have a GE cordless that I got for $29. I don't think it's even worth that much. Sound quality and reception is horrendous. I definitely couldn't recommend it.

However, I HIGHLY recommend Panasonic. I think they make the best cordless phones around. I have one of the 900MHz models that I picked up from Good Guys for like $30 (floor model). It's got great reception and sound quality. Haven't had a problem with it yet. If you have a Fry's near you, they always have them on sale.