Background

With the cost of plain old telephone service continuing to rise, and the fact that such a large number of people also have cellular phone bills to pay, it's no wonder that for the first time since its invention, people have been going land-line free.  With the emergence of high-speed Internet connections comes the possibility of using Voice-over-IP for the home to provide a cheap "land-line". Vonage was the first major operator of this type of phone service in the US and has hundreds-of-thousands of subscribers. I'm a Vonage subscriber.

What you get

The VTech IP8100-2 for Vonage comes with a base unit and two "handset units."  A "handset unit" is just a handset and a charging cradle.  The base unit gets hooked up to you Internet connection and the handsets roam the house.  The manual spends a lot of time telling you how to operate the phone--not enough time telling you how to set it up correctly so that you don't chuck it out the window.

The Manual is wrong

If you only have one computer in your house, then great!  This manual is for you. do this:

But even those with only one computer may have a laptop going to a wireless router.  Forget what the manual says.  Do this:

This will put your phone at the head of the line.  Your phone calls will absolutely get top priority on your network.  And why not? I would presume you want to have an actual conversation, not a fun time with echoes.

This way you won't have to worry about problems because of your flaky router.  (A discussion of statis IP's and DMZ routing should follow, but that's neither here nor there)

Sound quality?

Vonage can be indistiguishable from a land line. I bet this could be, too. Unfortunately, these 5.8 Ghz handsets have so much buzz that I can't stand to be on the phone. It was unbearable at times. I know this could be lessened by moving the base unit farther from all other electronics, but come on.  Everybody is going to put this by the cable/dsl modem, the router, and the power strip.  It's all just too much for this unit. If you want sound quality, move it as far away from other components as possible. 

You will be stuck

If you buy this, or if you've bought it already, you should know that there is no way to get more phones other than buying a matching VTech handset.  And only another two.  This is a deal breaker as far as I'm concerned.

Let me make these facts clear. If you buy this system: 

• You can't use a separate answering machine
• You can't use your own phones
• You can't use a fax machine
• You can't use a second line

I know someone who bought the VTech 8100 Cordless Phone System. I couldn't believe they bought it.  Vonage offers so many other solutions, and cheaper, too!  Well, a while later they needed a fax. Vonage sent another adapter to put on the line. Didn't work. After trying every possible combination, and about 9 hours on the phone, faxes could come through on line 2...if you hung up line 1.  Useless.  Don't do this to yourself. 

Conclusion

If you will only ever need one Vonage line and you never want to use your own phone and you'll never need to plug in something like a fax or an answering machine and you can locate your base unit away from other electronics...then this could be a nice purchase for you.  But how realistic is that?  Do the smart thing. Get a Vonage adapter with 2 standard phone jacks on sale with a rebate.