Polycom SoundPoint IP 670 - finally a COLOR screen from Polycom!

[Aaron Rosenthal]

Note: This picture is of the IP650. A zillion dollars to whoever can find me a picture of the IP670!
I've been really happy with Polycom lately and only wish Hollywood would throw more Polycom's onto their sets rather than the overused Cisco phones we see everywhere... The Office anyone? Polycom phones are arguably the best IP/SIP phones available to work with Asterisk. First, the SoundPoints are a rock solid piece of hardware which works all the time, plus I think the IP550/650's look great with the dual tone colors. They are just as sexy on the desk as Cisco in my opinion.... so c-mone Hollywood, give some lovin to Polycom.

Polycom is just weeks away (so they tell me) from releasing their newest edition to the SoundPoint IP product line. The last new member of the SoundPoint collection was the IP560 which really only offered a GigE switch but I must admit that's been a great feature add. The IP670 will also have a GigE switch so that if you're silly enough to take the risk and daisy-chain your computers through your phones, at least you'll be getting GigE speeds. But... the big news, and what I've been waiting for from Polycom is that the IP670 will have a backlit LCD COLOR display. These are the two most impressive addition you'll find in the IP670 over the IP650 but don't expect the price to be anything close. It looks like the IP670 is going to hit the market somewhere around the $700 mark which is a big hike just for color. Then again, think of the advertising revenue you could get by displaying ads in your hotel/casino!

[J. Oquendo]

Don't think about getting the 7971 working w/Asterisk. It's such a pain to get done so unless you have a vanilla configuration its not worth the headache. BLA doesn't work, dual lines have issues, tftp is problematic sometimes. It took me about 3 weeks to get it working after which we decided not to even offer them.

Polycoms are fine when your Asterisk PBX is internal but a headache getting them to work with NAT since they don't offer any method to enter a STUN server last I checked. Aside from that, Poly's annoy me with their annoying rebooting after every single change you make - being you have to switch back and forth between selections.

Snoms to me have been by far the best and most stable. I think I'm pushing about 1500 per year now as opposed to other phones. Order of relevance from my perspective:

Snom
Aastra
Polycom
Cisco

This is for Asterisk only. Order of preference for PBXnSIP: Snom, Polycom, Aastra, Cisco. Linksys is a joke to me, Grandstreams are sort of too cheap. Aaron, you should check out PBXnSIP some time ;)