Telephone-Computer integration solution.

[ricksfiona]

To the home office crew....

I'm trying to get a telephone that integrates with my p.c. One that could allow me to dial telephone number via the p.c. or via the phone if the p.c. is not on. Also, Caller ID would be necessary.

Or, just have a modem with this kind of functionality and have a separate phone?

My main thing is that the Caller ID info get passed onto my ACT! software so it would do a lookup of the contact if they were in my database, by looking up the phone number. I bought a Creative Labs Modem Blaster and it should've worked, but never has reliably. Forget Caller ID, though the modem is supposed to support it.

I know I have Caller ID since my phone display shows the information on incoming calls.

Is there ANYTHING out ther that could give me this functionality? Multi-line capability would be especially nice.

[ricksfiona]

To the home office crew....

I'm trying to get a telephone that integrates with my p.c. One that could allow me to dial telephone number via the p.c. or via the phone if the p.c. is not on. Also, Caller ID would be necessary.

Or, just have a modem with this kind of functionality and have a separate phone?

My main thing is that the Caller ID info get passed onto my ACT! software so it would do a lookup of the contact if they were in my database, by looking up the phone number. I bought a Creative Labs Modem Blaster and it should've worked, but never has reliably. Forget Caller ID, though the modem is supposed to support it.

I know I have Caller ID since my phone display shows the information on incoming calls.

Is there ANYTHING out ther that could give me this functionality? Multi-line capability would be especially nice.

[DavidRoss]

well there are two things i can think of... not sure if either of them would work for your situation.

First you could try using the home automation software HomeSeer (www.homeseer.com) they have great phone integration... and you could tie in other events when someone calls, like send you an e-mail, or run a program. Homeseer allows you to pretty much do anything you want using scripts, I’m sure you could find a way to take the caller ID info and put it into a database....

the second solution i can think of is a Microsoft product... its a wireless phone that you hook into your computer, that would not serve you much purpose, but the software that came with the phone did many things that you seem to be trying to do. i don’t think they make the phone anymore, i had it about 3 years ago, and don’t have it anymore. but you could try a search