Favorite IP Phone

[jneiberger]

For those of you who have used a number of different types of IP phones, I'm curious to find out what your favorite has been.

Personally, I've seen some Nortel IP phones and wasn't impressed. I was slightly more impressed by Avaya but not much. I'm not even a huge fan of the Cisco phones except for the 7970G, although the new updated 7941/7961 phones are pretty cool. The Mitel phones are rather cosmetically pleasing but I think their usefulness is limited compared to, for example, a Cisco 7970G.

What do you all think? What are your favorite IP phones?

 

[artesian2000]

For ease of setup i'm partial to the ip500 polycom. From feature/appearance perspective I have a cisco 7960 on my desk that works great. I'll be testing the new ip- avaya phone in the next few weeks.

 

[AdmanOK]

I like the Cisco phones for the fact that you can program your own applications on them. This functionality is not does not even require the phone to be running on a Cisco phone system.

 

[johnpoole]

i've used nortel and cisco, cisco is way eaiser to program but nortel with a larger system gives you a seamless tdm to voip system, i like the cisco wireless, but behind a tdm system they can't share ext numbers. with nortel wireless and a nortel tdm the two can share a ext number.. makes life eaiser..

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc

 

[ISDNman]

AdManOK,

Could you elaborate what you mean about programming your own applications?

An associate is looking at using VOIP phones as phone sets for a custom system. Your comment really caught our eyes.

I'd also like to hear what folks think about the odds of a generic SIP implementation being compatible with phones from multiple manufacturers. Is this likely to be seemleess, or is it more likely he'll need different drivers for each phone?