Great answering machine

Update 3/25/04: No problems after two years. This was money well spent!

Update 1/17/03: link to owners manual (bottom of review)

I bought this unit to replace a GE 29876 that was not compatible with my "Telezapper" (the Telezapper sends out a tone to get rid of Telemarketers, but the tone confused the GE machine and it did not answer.) I first tried a Sony TAM100, but after my family declared it an absolute piece of junk, I went searching again and found this AT&T unit.

I am cautious about "phone company" branded gear, since it usually seems to be cheap stuff that they try to dress up and mark up, but this one is great.

The unit has 40 minutes of digital recording time that can be used by any of the three mailboxes. Sound quality is excellent. Three outgoing messages and announce-only mode are more than I saw in other units. Overall the unit is very flexible. You can set your own security code, select the number of rings from 1 to 7, and even move messages between mailboxes. My favorite feature however is the Caller ID announcement, where it reads the incoming number out loud, or announces "Unknown Caller". This means no more running to the phone to check Caller ID. Neat!

All of the features are set through voice prompts, and you really don't need the manual. All around this is an excellent machine!

January 03 Update:
After almost a year, this answering machine is still working perfectly. The only negative I have found is the lack of "Beep" tone when it starts recording in a mailbox. For example, mailbox 3 is for my son. When a caller presses "3" to leave a message in that box, the unit records immediately, without a "Beep" to alert the caller, This is confusing to callers who are not familiar with the machine. I checked with AT&T, and this cannot be changed. The fix is to mention in the outgoing message that there is no beep.

Other than that, no problems. The unit retains all messages and settings (except time) during power outages and turns back on automatically when the power is back. The time and date are set automatically on the next incoming call.

Caller ID announcement and playback volume can be set loud enough to be heard clearly across the room. Remote message pickup and operation is menu driven, so you don't need to remember commands and options.

Still highly recommended!

Here is a link to the owner's manual for this machine:
http://telephones.att.com/docMgt/public/art/285/1726.pdf