What to Look For Before Buying an Answering Machine

You need either an answering machine or voice mail to keep track of your phone calls. If you are in business for yourself, it's important that you are able to receive your messages.  One of the calls might be the lucrative contract you've been waiting for!  A potential client may not be too forgiving or understanding if you tell him that your answering machine was broken and giving me messages at all.

Types of Answering Machines

There are two basic types of answering machine. The newer one is electric. It saves messages on a special chip which can be easily reset with the touch of a button. The 'old kind" of answering machine (or analog machine) uses a miniature cassette tape to record messages.

The Older Answering Machine Model is Favored

Many prefer the older style cassette answering machine because it usually has at least half an hour's worth more memory than the digital answering machine.

Others prefer the older answering machine models because the newer digital answering machines make it too easy to reset the messages. If you press the wrong button, the messages are all gone.

With most models of the digital answering machine, if you trip on the plug or there is a power outage,  all of your messages will be lost.  With the tape variety, your messages will still be stored, safe and sound, on the cassette tape. This is so much more convenient, and the tapes tend to last for a long time, so it is not like you'll have to be springing for a new tape every week or two.

An analog machine re-records over the messages as it goes if you tell it to reset, so if you change your mind, chances are that most of your messages are still there. You can even take the tape with you if someone leaves a particularly funny or memorable message, and play it for a friend on a mini cassette tape player.

Voice Mail May Be More Reliable Than An Answering Machine

Nowadays, the answering machine has been mostly replaced by voice mail. Voice mail is cheap, although you do have to pay some money every month. The good thing about voice mail is that you can check it from anywhere and it is generally more reliable than an answering machine, which can burn out or have its tape break. Of course, another popular feature of voice mail is that it is compatible with a cell phone. Basically, if you do have a cell phone, you will probably get voice mail automatically because it is the only way to save messages on your cell phone.

Another benefit of choosing voice mail over an answering machine is that if you are on the phone, your caller will not get a busy signal.  Instead, incoming messages will automatically roll over into your voice mail.

A drawback with voice mail is that its storage capacity might be limited. Depending on the number and length of calls that you receive, your voice mail box might fill up within an hour and you will miss out on important calls.  You should check with your vendor to see what storage limitations come with the voice mail account.