Verizon Hub

[Tyek]

http://i.gizmodo.com/5138025/verizon-hu ... ays-wanted

I bought this this weekend to function as my home office line. It takes about 2 weeks to switch the lines to my existing phone number, which I need because all the business cards and the company web site have my current office phone and it would be a pain to switch.

The local Verizon is running a deal on these. It was 250 dollars, but they gave me an in-store discount, then you also get a 50 dollar rebate bringing the initial cost to 149 dollars. Unfortunately I went home set it up and found out they gave me the second store demo unit. I had to take it back today and they took forever to figure out how to swap the phones with a real version that worked. So I got another 50 dollar discount.

The phone so far is very nice. It can have up to 4 satellite phones hooked up to it. (80 dollars each). You can download photos so it works like a digital picture frame. It also has all the local restaurants, stores etc.. available and a mapping system. Like a GPS, I push the food icon, it pulls up a list of types, then gives me the stores in my area, a map to the location and a phone number. If I touch the phone number it calls them right then.

I can look up the local theatre times, trailers and they said even buy tickets. The phone also gives me Caperone features for my kid and it displays the 5 day weather forcast, local time and other goodies. I can do this on any computer, so we will see how functional those things are, but it is nice and handy as a hub.

The cost is 34.99 a month for unlimited US calls, there are surcharges for international calls, but I only have one brother in Costa Rica, so not a lot of international calls. I was paying about 55.00 a month on the office line and this phone seems to have nicer speakerphone and call forwarding options. It also has a nice quick texting screen.

I will be giving it a test run for the next two weeks while the number transfers and since I am paid up on the current office line until the 29th, it works well in the timeframe so I can see if this is really worth it. If anyone is interested or looking at this I will update if it sucks or the best thing ever if you would like. I am not nearly as detailed as Winnow on this, but not really sure what the interest level is.