Pingtel Xpressa

Posted by Scott Laird Sat, 08 Oct 2005 00:54:18 GMT

One side effect of running my own business is that I’ve been spending a lot of time on the phone. Unfortunately, the $10 analog phone that I was using was hard to use for more then 15 minutes at a time, and it wasn’t always very easy to hear what the other party was saying. That’s not a great mix for a business phone.

So, I’ve been looking around to find a cheap way to get a good phone with a headset on my desk. None of the analog headsets phones that I’ve looked at have been very appealing, so I’ve been looking at cheap VoIP phones with 2.5mm phone jacks. Amazingly enough, VoIPSupply.com decided to clear out a bunch of old phones via eBay at just the right time, so I was able to pick up a Pingtel Xpressa for a song.

xpressa

Pingtel Xpressa

The Xpressa was a first-generation VoIP phone, and it was orphaned by Pingtel over a year ago. However, in many ways it’s still the highest-end SIP phone on the market. It comes with a Palm-like 160x160 grayscale display, supports (pre-standard) Power-over-Ethernet, and runs Java applets natively on the phone. The SDK is still available from Pingtel, but you have to hunt for it a bit. I paid about the same for the Xpressa as I did for my Sipura/Linksys SPA-841, but the Pingtel is clearly better in nearly every area–it’s easier to use, it’s more solid, it’s more attractive, it has more features, and sounds better. It’s lacking a few NAT features and I can’t find a way to use different ringtones for different lines, but other then that it does everything that I need. It comes with a standard 2.5mm headphone jack, so I picked up a cheap Plantronics headset; I’ve spent nearly two hours on the phone so far today, and everything has been perfect.

Er, well, mostly everything. I actually ordered the mango colored model from VoIPSupply, but somehow ended up with a charcoal-colored phone instead. Hopefully they’ll be able to fix that soon. Also, since Pingtel discontinued the phone (and actually sold it off to an unnamed vendor, alleged to be 3com), they’ve pulled all of the add-on software packages off of their website; that means that I haven’t been able to find their LDAP-based phonebook. I’ve been fishing around and I’m sure that I can find a copy somewhere. For now, I’ve been using Jon’s Phone Tool to dial from Quicksilver. JPT is swimming in features, 95% of which are useless to me, but it seems to do a decent job dialing my phone for me, so I’ll probably pay the $12 fee for it if I can’t get the Pingtel Phonebook to work.

Update: As expected, VoIPSupply is fixing the mango-colored problem. I should have a mango phone on the way shortly.

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Comments

  1. Jay Batson said 10 days later:

    I am (was) the founding CEO of Pingtel, and this phone was my (and my team’s) baby. So this kind of nice praise makes me smile from ear to ear.

    We tried very hard to make this product exactly as you described: solid, high-quality audio, best in class, and easy to use. You wouldn’t believe how much we sweat the little things, like the form of the convex curve on the place where you put your ear, and the little bulge on the back of the handset to help you hold the handset on your shoulder when you’re using both hands to type. And so on for so many little bits on the phone. (key force, handset weight, coiled cord quality, … the list is huge.)

    Though exiting the phone business was the right thing to do for Pingtel from a business perspective, it was a sad and hard thing to do, because the xpressa phone was truly a good product (IMHO, of course.)

    I’m still using mine, and will for a long time, I’m sure. At some point, I’m sure the code will get so long-in-the-tooth that it’ll be hard to keep running on production networks. But until then, I’ll be with you using my own Mango phone. :-) (A color not many thought we should make, by the way….)

  2. peter said 4 months later:

    I am looking for the java applets/addons for pingtel xpressa but couldnt able to find even single. I will be grateful if someone provide me all the developed applications for pingtel xpressa. Thank you in advance. batelcoster@gmail.com

  3. Joe Fabulouz said 6 months later:

    What did you pay for the xPressa? I’ve got two unused ones in white that I’m either gonna sell or put to use. (I even have a developmental model based on an old telephone!) Any recommendations as to what service I can use at home for these things???

  4. Stephane said about 1 year later:

    Just got one of this phone and it’s a very very good and nice product, working perfectly on my lan with my asterisk server but I’m fighting to get it work outside my lan over the internet, seem nat problem and I am not an SIP guru but I will get it work im pretty sure I am interested for the applications that was developed for this phone as well or any kind of informations about this product. Thanks to let me know stephane@thevtek.com

    Stephane from Montreal

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