One of the nice things about Christmas this year was the new phone toys. Jamie and I got new phone - her a Palm Treo 650, and me a Motorola Razr V3. I bought it primarily for the thinness so I could carry it in a shirt pocket, and it's a little ironic that it's always on a belt holster (also a first for me ) that substantially increases its thickness. It has a camera, a camcorder, text messaging, yada, yada, yada, but the main thing I like is that it's on a belt holster (by the Clip Company, which I highly recommend - push the button and it's out, but with the new voice-activated headset, it pretty much stays there.
On to the headeset. When I saw someone using a Bluetooth headset the first time I thought it was the silliest thing I'd ever seen, but one use, and I'm hooked. I keep it (folded) in my shirt pocket. When the phone rings or I want to make a call I take it out, unfold t, and hang it on my hear. One push on the button and it answers the call. To make a call, I push the button and it asks for a command. Say "Call home" and it dials the phone book entry for "home". And it actually works. I can make calls with both hands free to either write on my PDA or the laptop, or just pace with my hands in my pockets. I spent an hour in a elevator lobby a couple of weeks ago on a conference call - probably did a couple miles of walking, with my arm fatigue from holding up the phone. I can concentrate better and work on other things while listening if I need to.
But it doesn't stop there. I've been looking for speakerphones for the study at home so that I can walk around the study or study patio (you get the idea I like to pace?) during phone calls. It would also allow me to answer a call while still having both hands to work on the computer. The phone I have had - while a good cordless one, coincidentally also by Uniden - doesn't have a speakerphoen feature. But after seeing the benefits of a headset, I started looking for a Bluetooth-enabled phone that would allow me to use the new toy, er, headset. The only phone I found that had that feature was the Uniden ELBT595, but in researching it I foudn that it had some other features I could use as well.
The phone has a folding handset that in many ways is the heart of the phone for Bluetooth purposes. You can use a BT headset with it, but it must stay with 10-15 feet of the handset. So you can walk around, but you have to carry the handset with you - hence I keep the belt clip for the handset close by. But the handset has another really useful feature, and that is the ability to call out on either the land line OR the cell phone line. The benefit to this is that if you do all your long distance on your cell phone minutes that you're already paying for, as Jamie and I do, you can make the calls on the handset or the speakerphone without having to call on the (less comfortable) cell phone. Also, since you can add handsets without phone lines, you can have handsets all over the house and use whichever one is closest for a long distance call without having to go find the cell phone. The system can also be used as an intercom, which is something we've been needing to get Grayson when he's up in his room, and as a baby monitor. haven't gotten additional handsets for either of these functions yet, but they're useful options.
May not be the ultimate phone system yet, but it's nice to have the additional features and to see the land and cell lines started to mesh at home. And the new phone has really opened the door to a lot of new features. But it's still the ten dollar belt clip that has made the biggest difference - it's really one less thing to have to carry, which I wasn't expecting when I got it.