Computer run phone system. Problems.

[boomerang]

My wife manages a small office with 6 phones that are managed by a computer. There are three lines coming into the business and the computer handles all the functions required.

Recently the display on the "main phone" has shown "Low Battery" or something very similar. The outfit that installed the system says the fix is to shut down the computer for an hour. This is course leaves the business with no phone service, but she did it and all was OK for a while.

It displayed the low battery message again yesterday and now the fix they say, is to shut the computer off for 8 hours. My wife told them this was not possible and the answer back was that she should enter into a service contract for $900 a year. Either that, or after a year the computer would have to be replaced for $1800. Needless to say she is pissed and I am confused.

I have not looked into this box at all. I have no idea what OS it is running. I can't imagine what battery they are talking about that would recharge with the computer turned off.

This is just a stand alone box with no monitor, keyboard or mouse attached. He set it up with a laptop connected to it.

Anyone here have any experience or knowledge with a system of this kind?

 

[TwoBills]

That's a good one. What I would do is open the box and see what kind of back up battery is involved. Probably just a 4 or 7ah battery, what you see in a ups. These can be had for about $20. Might it be refering to the cmos battery? There's going to be some sort of bu battery in there. Check it out

Go over to networks and post. Paladin is kinda the in house phone guy there. I'm sure he'll have an idea or two.

BTW, a good rule of thumb for service contracts: annual cost = 10% of the original cost of the system.

 

[boomerang]

Thanks for the advice. I'll post it over there. What's upsetting is that when the system was installed, there was no mention of a battery "situation".

I've moved this over to Networking.