Summer Of Upgrades, Five
Posted on | September 6, 2007 at 4:06 pm | 3 Comments
I recently received the Uniden TRU9465-2 Expandable Cordless Phone System as a gift, which I have used to replace the three separate cordless phones I had in my house. It’s cool because you only have to plug the phone’s base unit into one phone outlet, and then you can put the handsets wherever you want in the house. They communicate wirelessly with the base unit. (Thanks to Pilto for turning me onto these.)
They have a lot of cool features, such as being able to copy the phonebook from one handset to another, so you only have to enter your frequently used numbers once. The unit I got came with two handsets, but I ended up buying a third one. The weird thing about the third handset is that it even though it works fine in the system and looks just like the other handsets, it seems to have different software (firmware?) in it. The menus and features are slightly different.
One reason I needed/wanted this system was because for some reason my phone line got overloaded with the three separate cordless phones and the DSL modem I had plugged in. It was so overloaded that the modem in my Dish Network satellite receiver was unable to “phone home”. A Dish engineer came over and checked it out, measuring the line load, and we found that by unplugging some of the phones, the receiver modem would then work. We actually further tracked it down to some DSL filters that apparently weren’t working very well – replacement filters worked better. But the filters would not have been an issue if the line in general wasn’t so close to the edge, load-wise and noise-wise. Having just one phone and the DSL modem (and the receiver modem) plugged in works better, and my phone calls are clearer.
I also like being able to put the handset/charger anywhere I want. I only need each handset to be close to an electrical outlet and not a phone outlet as well. My goal of complete laziness includes never having to get up to answer a phone or to check to see if someone left a message. I have voice mail through my phone company, not an answering machine, and the handsets have a little light on the top that blinks when there’s a voice mail.
I haven’t really liked Uniden cordless phones in the past. I remember my Dad always used to buy them and they didn’t seem to work very well. They seemed like the cheaper alternative cordless phones. However, I’ve been disappointed with more “premier” brands like Panasonic (whom I used to love) recently, so it was time for a change. I must say this one is performing flawlessly so far.
Call me crazy, but I seem to remember having a Sony cordless phone in the 80s that worked on a similar concept, i.e. there was only one base unit and a couple of different handsets on chargers in the house. But now that I think about it, maybe there was just one handset, and the extra charger unit was for when you wanted to keep the handset far from the base unit and not have it run out of battery power. Yeah, that must be it.
Pet Peeve Of The Day: Cucumbers. Even picking them out of my salad doesn’t work, because at that point it’s too late and they’ve already contaminated the rest of the salad with their ghastly taste germs.
Latre.
Comments
3 Responses to “Summer Of Upgrades, Five”
September 6th, 2007 @ 9:02 pm
Cucumbers rubbed in cilantro!
September 7th, 2007 @ 10:29 am
Wow. I consider cucumbers to be the watermelon of vegetables–that is, entirely miraculous and transcendent. Just last night I had an “inside out” dragon roll with the cucumber on the outside of the seaweed: heaven!
September 7th, 2007 @ 10:09 pm
That makes perfect sense to me, Paula, since I also dislike watermelons. (There’s only one kind of melon I like!) Also, cucumbers ruin sushi rolls just like sesame seeds do.