V-Tech Your Honey
Written: Dec 14 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Works well, battery life, clear audible signal, reliable
Cons: the color is a little jarring
The Bottom Line: Darn good phone at a great price. I've never had any problems with it.
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| Granniemose's Full Review: Vtech VT 9111 900 MHz - Cordless Phone |
I have received a few nice comments because at my age I use the computer and seem to enjoy twenty first century technology – and it’s true, I do enjoy the twenty-first century. However, when I get to feeling a little too proud of myself, all at once the twenty- first century shows its technical teeth and knocks all the pride right out of me.
One of the ways is by the insidious “call waiting” thing that I have never yet really mastered. I always manage to lose the call that is coming in – or the call that is on hold – and most likely before I am done; I manage to lose them both. Often when I get a call while I am on-line, the call knocks me right off of AOL, and then I have a wait before I can get back on. Usually I don’t manage to get the incoming call either. There must be a way to keep that from happening, but I have yet to master it.
I would like to blame my phone – a V-tech® VT3-9011 2.46GH2 cordless phone system, but I cannot. I have had that phone for over a year now, and I have no complaints. Judith used it before she put it in my bedroom, and she never had trouble with” call waiting.” I know – it’s just me.
Let me tell you a bit about my phone. First it is a lovely powdery lime green – which is a good match for my bedspread and curtains. Second, it is a speakerphone, and the line is connected with a digital answering machine. It has caller ID, so I don’t have to answer if it is somebody trying to sell me a new credit card unless I want to. There is another phone between the dining room and the living room that is on my line. That answering machine takes calls and tells me the time and day of the week each call came through.
Jude has her own telephone line upstairs, and her own phone system, which I think is different from the one I use. The only problem I have is that sometimes I have trouble figuring out whether it is her upstairs phone that is ringing, or my downstairs phone. That, of course, is not much of a problem.
Today when I lost both the call I was on, and the incoming call, I got to think how simple the old phones were. Since I was born in 1922, I can remember the earliest phone my parents had. It was a horn like face that you talked into, and was mounted on a tube. The receiver that you listened to was in a hook like receptacle mounted on the tube. It was black, of course.
Children were not allowed to touch the phone, and nobody was allowed to talk on it if it was raining outside. Even if it only looked like an electrical storm might be in the works, the phone was taboo. My mother was convinced that lightning would travel through the wires and zap you dead through the earphones.
In 1932 we moved to South Dakota to wait out the depression at my Grandparent’s home. Grandma’s phone was mounted on the wall- still with the horn type speaker and the hand held receiver. If you wanted to make a call, you had to crank the phone to get the operator.
There were at least twelve people on the party line, and each phone had its own slightly different ring for incoming calls. You were not supposed to listen in unless it was for you, but of course, nearly everybody did. You didn’t need an Enquirer to keep you up on gossip – the phone was the newspaper. We were always under strict orders never to discuss private family business with anyone on the phone. If an emergency was pending (a possible tornado, or blizzard warning for instance) an emergency ring similar to an SOS rang on all the phones, and nearly everyone got the message. Sometimes the lack of privacy was a good thing. If somebody had an emergency and needed help, neighbors found out about it via the party line, and were closer and able to offer help quicker and more abundantly then the sheriff or doctor who was being called.
My family used the wall phones or the upright phones probably until the dial phones were invented. Most of you remember dial phones I think. When we moved from Grandma’s, we got a phone that we could dial. It was still an upright on a three-person party line, but the dialing was new, and we loved it. I think we got ours about 1936. By this time my brother, sister and even I were getting calls from our friends. We were still not allowed to use the phone if the weather was bad. If anyone in the family had a cold or any kind of illness, the mouthpiece of the phone had to be wiped with rubbing alcohol before we could use it. Imagine a young teenager trying to talk to a boy while her mother is busy wiping the phone with rubbing alcohol while she was talking – and interrupting the conversation to add her two cents worth. At least one budding romance got off to a pretty rocky start.
I honestly don’t remember exactly, but I believe we used the upright phones until shortly after the war was over. I know the phone always occupied its own little table, with a straight chair that could be pulled up so messages could be written. It was always polished. The rather uncomfortable straight chair was chosen because my mother thought we wouldn’t talk too long if we were uncomfortable.
When I left home and got married, our first telephone was a black dial phone that could be held in one hand. That was the phone we used for about twenty years. When we moved to a suburb of Cleveland (Parma Heights) the house we bought had a red dial one-piece phone. We kept the phone because it was our first unblack telephone. When that one was exchanged for a push button model (about 1970) we purchased the red phone from Ma Bell for sentimental reasons. One of my grandsons fell in love with the “antique” red phone, and I remember sending it to him for a birthday present. I believe it still resides in his bedroom, and still works.
Then I graduated to a phone with an answering machine. The cordless phones and the cell phones followed right along. So now we know who is calling us – and who did call us. We can make the phone ring stridently or buzz softly. If you are smart, you can put one person on hold, while you talk to somebody else. You can make your phone talk loud enough so that everyone in the room can hear it, or keep it very private.
When you stop to think about it, technology is, in itself, a miracle. Before telephones, my grandmother told me that many people kept homing pigeons to keep in touch with family members who were out of state. They relied a lot on word of mouth. If Pa was going to town he would be instructed to stop at the Jones place to tell them that Mary Smith had had her baby boy. Grandma had the news because somebody had stopped to tell her - and so it went. When the railroads pushed their way through South Dakota, Grandma said communication was easier, although the word of mouth often beat the mail.
So that’s it. If you want a phone that is pretty, and has all the features, try the V-tech® 3-9011 – 2.4 GH2 (whatever that means). We have had ours about two years now, and have had no problems with it. The batteries charge up quickly if you forget and leave it wherever you carried it while you were talking, and didn’t replace it in the charger. I have run the batteries down a couple of times that way, but they charge up so quickly that it really hasn’t mattered. We paid about $100 for ours, and I imagine that in the two years past they have come up with something even better, and probably cheaper.
I hope everybody has a happy Christmas and New Year, and I suggest you call those near and dear to you on your new, pretty colored V-tech cordless phone for Christmas. They will be so happy to hear from you.
Thanks for reading this. Happy Holidays.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Granniemose
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Member: Virginia
Location: Greenest spot in the land of the free
Reviews written: 207
Trusted by: 312 members
About Me:
I'm back. Waiting for Lorace to give me another piece of poetry
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