So if people remember from awhile back (i'm sure i'm still on ignore for a few people having annoyed them with my poverty :P ) I had a need for putting up some cheap VOIP lines for a future project, and after saving money with Google Voice and Tracfones i'm finally trying to do some of that.
I was about to buy some "unlocked, previously used with Fonality" Polycom Soundpoint 550's or 335's but then realized I didn't fully understand what I was buying and didn't want to just get something that may not do what I needed it to do. I wasn't aware they might be locked to egin with, I realize I didn't have the knowledge to even verify function (without a working voip i'm just taking their word for the moment while dropping cash), and more..
Checking 'real' providers like callcentric and anveo has mentions of programming your phones for compatibility with their system as your problem to solve... and looking into comments on amazon for phones like the polycom indicated a perhaps somewhat hostile corporate attitude towards people reusing old phones by the sound of it.
If somebody could recommend some self study guides so that I fully/better understand all the terms, how phones are reprogrammed to work, what the standards might be (if i'm only shopping for SIP compatibility/for all I know there's other standards, how to know whether HD audio is supported/for all I know there's other standards), where best to check for reviews and figure out whats a good deal and so forth. It can be physical books to get, webguides, other forums to ask beginner questions if more appropriate than here, etc. I'm the unintentional 'tech' guy having to set this up whether I want to be or not and all I know is I dont fully understand the process right now.
I originally asked alot more about analog telephone adapters, i'm still planning to use a few of those (because I have some office phones I just REALLY like the feel of already) but i'm taking other peoples advice and just jumping into directly ethernet attached VOIP phones costing the same or less as just an ATA adapter would normally go for used.
I just need to know I don't buy incompatible VOIP phones somehow that are worthless due to locking, different standards, unsupported but needed features or other unknown problems.
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If anyone is curious, the planned system is to grow from 6 to 24 phones max (if found cheap enough, and the polycoms were pretty cheap/cheaper than ATA adapters) for VERY intermittent use (like activated one month out of the year) hence why the pennies count to handle things related to occasional chairitable use (ie setting up activist friends with a 'phone bank' to handle something they posted going viral, like right now I was trying to work with some people in the 'tent city' homeless camp in minneapolis but I didn't have my side of the phone contacts working for them to use yet so it's been a bit of a sh__show juggling private cell numbers to journalists and such) along with a similar attempted use for small business projects. (ie some article goes viral and everyone tries to call your listed online contact, so for a month the one main line becomes 15-20 and volunteers trying to start up the project with me fill the seats so that Real Human Response occurs instead of 1000 messages on the machine to deal with later)
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