My 
Northern Telecom Vista 350
Growing up in Toronto in the 80s and 90s meant that my telecom provider at home was Bell.
While you used to be able to buy phones, you also could rent them. For numerous reasons (mostly because Bell was a corporate brother to Northern Telecom) Bell had “NT” phones.
And damn, those phones were good. I should say ARE good.
Upon return to Canada back in ‘97, I purchased from London Drugs a refurbished Northern Telecom (the older branding of ‘Nortel’) Vista 350 for what I recall as nearly $100. My lovely wife mocked me. She said it was a waste of money and had those horrible things called cords.
13 years later.
In those 13 years probably 3 or 4 sets of cordless phones have arrived and departed because they sucked or died, or both.
I just finished working from home for a week, using my Vista 350 phone making 20-30 calls a day.
Without fail, every phone call was perfect. The buttons are clearly labeled, and each operation worked as I expected them.
Conversely, my client’s office uses an Avaya PBX with expensive handsets. But no one really know’s to use them. I’m sure it has a ton of features, but it’s so damn non-intuitive, no one tries. It’s fairly common to see people on their cell phones, while sitting at their desks.
My Vista 350, with fewer buttons than the ugly Avaya (i.e. Lucent) permits a multitude of seemingly obvious tasks with ease:
- Call Display (Name AND number; that Avaya only does number)
- Scrollable Caller list (Avaya doesn’t have one)
- Maintain a directory of phone numbers and names (Avaya is a no go)
- Add a recent caller to a the directory (Avaya can’t do that)
- Redial last few dialled numbers (nope for Avaya)
- Put caller on hold, make new call, connect callers (I fail every time on the Avaya)
- Visual ringing (bright blinking red light which his handy when kids Nintendo Wii is blaring)
- Awesome speakerphone
And this phone is well over 15 years old and it works without power.
(Oddly, these are all things that an iPhone with similar grace.)
But try and buy a phone like my Vista 350 today.
No luck, FutureShop carries a single corded model. Telus makes no indication they sell corded telephones on their web-site.
Though I’m happy to see that Bell still sells a child of my phone the Aastra 390.
It Just Works — the phone on my desk.
Most people who have a phone also have a computer. So why is it that the only integration that exists between your phone and your computer is the fact you can get an email with your monthly bill along with some online account maintenance?
, I see a lot of paper towel dispensers.
A picture of a waving hand in front of a small window is all that the user needs to know about how to operate this dispenser. Such a dispenser works, and works well.
It’s been under development continually for several hundred years. But alas the newspaper as we know it, may not be around much longer.