Uniden DECT 6.0 DCX100 is pretty stupid

A while back I wanted to replace my current wireless phone system with a new one, so that I could have more phone extensions. After a little research I chose the Uniden DECT 6.0 DCX100. I got it home, fired it up, and immediately found some problems. These problems were not so serious as to force me to return the phone, but they are very annoying.

One serious/annoying problem is that the speakerphone has the squelch set incorrectly. By squelch, I mean the volume the remote person must speak at to engage the external speaker on the phones. Generally, unless the person I am listening to is a serious loudmouth, the speakerphone is unusable because I only hear part of every other word. The related lack of an external headset jack makes this more serious.

A very annoying problems are all related to putting people on hold, transferring calls, and conference calls. When you put anyone on hold either to put them on hold or to transfer the call to another phone, you get some really really silly fake (MIDI or similar) carrousel music. This is silly but fine when you are talking to friends or family, but when you are on a conference call or a customer call, it really is pretty embarrassing.

The phone documentation suggests that conference calls are impossible except involving the base station. Silly me, I believed it. However, in preparing this rant I looked into the base station documentation to see how that worked only to discover that it tells how to conference between two phone. The method is non-intuitive, but it does work. You still are forced to hear that silly music, though.

Some of the menuing is pretty lame/confusing, but this is kind of normal I fear.

The other features seem fine. Range is good. Battery life is fine. The ability to push phone list changes around is good (though at least in my environment, the requirement that you have to do stuff on both phones to push a change is annoying so a shared address book would be better). I still have not decided whether or not the beeps on all phones when there is a message is good or not. The key lock so that you can put the phone in your pocket is good.

The moral of the story? Hmm. Even when the documentation says it is impossible read more documentation? Try try again? Uniden documentation sucks? Writing well researched rants can sometimes lead to enlightenment? Well, something like that.