PK Shiu

It is a cordless phone system with a desk unit that is a phone and an answering system for two lines. It communicates with one to eight cordless handsets via the new 2.4 GHz frequency. The cordless handset does not requires a phone jack. The handsets communicates with the external lines via the cordless connection to the desk unit.

Quick Impressions

The phones are very light. They are not poorly built, but certainly have the light plastic feel. The belt clip for the cordless unit is very difficult to attach.

Pluses

• Use standard AA rechargable batteries.
• Use a room monitoring function where you can set up a cordless headset to call the base when the noise level in a room is higher than some threshold. I guess it can be used as a baby monitor.
• The corded handset, plugged in headset, and corless headset sound qualities are very good, compare to all my other phones. The cordless is very clear, compare to my Panasonic analog 900MHz phone.
• Has built in 2.5 mm jack for headset. I use both a headset from Hello Direct and one from Jabra. Both works great. The speaker button switches the phone to headset operation, i.e. if the headset is plugged in, the speakerphone is disabled. This is also a minus.

Minuses

• No pager call feature, i.e. after someone leaves a message, the phone could call out to a pager to notify me of new message. Some panasonic phone has this feature.
• After placing a call on hold, you cannot pick up the same call on another phone. You have to go through a transfer operation, but the transfer operation will time out on you if you don't answer on the other phone fast enough.
• The phone directory limits entries to only 24 digits.
• You cannot head the DTMF tones when dialing, you only hear key clicks.
• You hear nothing when dialing from the directory. I guess I am nostalgic about TDMF.
• When entering names in the phone directory, you cannot edit the name. You can only backspace destructively.
• The phone supports the use of headsets, but if a headset is plugged into the base phone, the speakerphone is disabled. So I cannot switch between speakerphone and headset without plugging and unplugging the phone.
• You cannot duplicate the phone directory onto the cordless headsets. (Note: You can duplicate the directory list between cordless units.

Tips

• Enable Calls Barge In so that the gigaset phones can pick up a call recieved/initiated on a non gigaset phone.
• The menu selections are circular. Since the Answering system settings are all the way at the end, use the Back button to get to it without having to go through all the other settings.
• Transfering between phones
  I finally got this figured out. I often want to transfer a call I received at the desk station to the mobile phone so that I can walk around while on the phone. To transfer from the base follow these steps:
  1. at base: press CONF
  2. at base: press INT then the mobile number, e.g. 1
  3. at base: press REL. This releases the base so that I can walk to the mobile and not have to return to the base to complete the transfer.
  4. at mobile: press TALK

Wish List

• An interface to download name and numbers from PC.