Did you know that many newer, souped-up computers are coming without telephone modems installed?? :-p I just found out. I use DSL, so I have not really had any need for a phone modem. But I am tinkering with the phone line (I want to control telephone calls from my computer) and I had to buy a data modem for the computer. It caused me to look afresh at my telephone lines, installation and wiring, and my telephone plan with my phone company (Verizon).
(I also discovered that my telephone account still has an active “Wire Maintenance Plan” that I was getting charged $10 a month for!! Holy cow! Since I rewired my entire living room, including telephone and ethernet, I think I am confident that I don’t need to pay Verizon $10 a month to fix it “in case” something goes wrong. Grr! I’ve been paying that all this time!!).
Anyway… data modems can be pricey! I had a choice of getting an internal or an external modem for my computer. My computer is still under warranty, so I had to choose an external (I would have loved to install an internal!! And they were cheaper!) modem. But, yow, external modems can be as much as $200! So I went “budget” (of course!). Hey– no surpises here– the best stuff I found was at (you guessed it) Buy.com! This is the TRENDnet data modem on sale. Nice price, eh!
Buy.com has great stuff. I am always checking out their weekly sale page for great deals on electronics and supplies. I highly recommend Buy.com– not only are their prices spectacular, so is their customer service, their shipping speed, and the selection! Buy.com allows third-party sellers to sell stuff, which really improves the selection and makes prices much more competitive. So if you need something (anything under the sun, really), try Buy.com before going to those pricey Big Box stores. I love Buy.com!
So, now with my data modem coming in, I can monitor all phone calls from my computer. I’ll have more about that in later posts– but we get a lot of telemarketing calls and I’m going to use some software to *zap* these calls forever!!! Muahahahahahha!!!
July 12, 2009 at 1:26 pm
We got a new phone number a while back and when we did we inherited someone Else’s unwanted phone calls. being the computer geek of the family I set out to find a way to zap the calls without spending money. I have used a few different programs to date and found that the cheapest one for me with the most functionality is Phone tray free, here is a link http://mylinuxtoday.blogspot.com/2009/03/answering-machine-for-linux.html We have been using it for almost two years now and its practically stopped the calls it works better than the do not call list if you ask me. good luck.
July 12, 2009 at 7:04 pm
Hey Sparky, thanks a lot for the link. I actually JUST heard about Phone Tray and have been testing it out. It looks amazing!!! It’s good to know you’ve been using it for so long and that it is reliable.