Is newer technology better?

With my cordless phones failing, I was on the hunt for a new set of phones. After a bit of hemming and hawing, I got the Panasonic KX-TG7624 4 handset set. The main feature I wanted was the ability to set a different ringtone per caller. The old Uniden set we have (about 8 years old) did this and worked well. We have a bunch of ringers to choose from and we can set them on a per phonebook entry basis. This new Panasonic said Ringer ID was a feature.

After 45 minutes of playing with the set and reading the manual, I figured out that the Ringer ID was not as full featured as what I already had. The ringer tones are limited to 3 groups, each with 1 ringer per group. The groups were named Home, Cell 1 and Cell 2. This was less than helpful. The phone has the ability to link cell phones to it which is something that I not only didn't need, it made the phone far too confusing to figure out.

Once I realized that it didn't really have the 1 feature I wanted, I immediately boxed up the phones and will return them to Costco tomorrow. I felt like a moron trying to set up the phones; I have a degree in engineering and setting up these phones became an exercise in frustration.

Do all these extra features really help? Do people really want more features that they can't figure out how to use?

Comments

August 29th, 2011
Jared

I was skeptical about the cell phone linking feature on my panasonic portable phone myself but after trying it out I love it. I can now set my phone in the charger when I get home and if someone calls me all my handsets ring. I have not tried to customize the ringers based on caller ID but setting up the phone with two cell phones (bluetooth link) was a really neat feature that I was pleasantly suppressed by.