Bunny,
Not dissagreeing with you necessarily but, fyi
"At least that is until you get phones with voice announce intercom, off hook voice announce, lots of buttons, etc."
Already out there!!! I can even intercom and voice announce to remote sites.
"Oh, maintainance. If you spill water on your pbx phone, you can swap it with another in a minute. Try that with a voip phone that has to be reprogrammed."
ahh, the ONLY thing I have to enter on my sip phones is the mac address and then click a single button for the template I want to use.
CO lines, and call appearences for the station are automaticvally added when I plug the phone in. If I swap out a phone in an Avaya or Panny I have to reprogram the phone the new phone doesn't get the programming from the PBX.
As for your water spill - well this could happen to any phone, but my experience is that very few sub 30 users keep a stack of extra phones on hand "just in case". We, at leat I do, get calls at least once a week to have a phone shipped over night. While on the sip system I can just go to xten, download and install the free version in about 2 minutes and I am talking with full access!
