Once in awhile, I have found the newer isn’t necessarily better. The best example that I can think of is my phone system - a BizFon 680. As a small business person, I have a home based office with three incoming phone lines. Like many entrepreneurs, I turned to my local phone company for help. The company, Verizon, offers a Centrex system that allows call forwarding, caller ID, call rollover and so on. I simply plug in my phones and its done. That was fine for awhile but it was a clumsy system. Transfering calls was a pain, I couldn’t create vioce mail boxes for my co-workers and it was a pain to forward calls to my cell phone. I did a bit of searching on the net and found a number of PBX systems. However, many were really expensive ($5000 and up).

Then I found BizFon. They offer a number of different systems, including an IP system (which their sales guy DIDN’T recommend) but my choice was the 680 model. For about $1500, you get the control box. You simply plug in the incoming lines, then plug in your regular handsets (or you can buy feature added BizFon handsets), push the Blue configuration button on the control box (which voice prompts you through the set up process) and you’re done!

I’ve had my BizFon system for about 7 years. The unit has burned out once and I had to replace it. BizFon has a discount for replacing broken boxes - not a big one but it helps. You can configure multiple internal lines and with plug-in modules, add virtual extensions as well.

Currently, I have people working for me across the country and each of them has a virtual extension. The extension forwards incoming calls to their cell phones. When a call comes in, it announces that it’s a call from the BizFon system. The recipient of the call can then choose to accept the call by pressing “1″ or let it roll over to voicemail. The system also allows for pager notification to your cell phone.

There are lots of additional features but suffice it to say that I think this remains a terrific product despite newer virtual technologies.