Office Communications Server – IP phone review

I wanted to take a few minutes to provide an incomplete review of a couple of the new OCS-compatible IP phones. I’ve been using 2 different ones here at PointBridge:

• The "Tanjay" – aka the Polycom CX400 / Nortel 8540
• The "Catalina" – aka the Polycom CX200

I’m not going to rehash all the bells and whistles and technical specs… that stuff is all over the web. What I thought I would do is list out what I see as the strengths and weakness, having used these for a few months now.

Catalina – Polycom CX200

Catalina Strengths:

1. It’s a USB device, so wherever Communicator is running, you can plug the Catalina in to a USB port and have a handset.
2. Voice quality is good
3. Speakerphone is pretty good
4. Voicemail indicator works
5. Phone fits pretty easily into a backpack / bag

Weaknesses

1. No keypad on the phone – you dial numbers with your communicator client
2. It’s pretty harsh on the eyes – at first glance it looked like something that someone made out of parts from a "RadioShack home-electronics build your own transistor radio kit".

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I really like the Catalina – it’s especially nice to leave on a common desk / hotelling cubicle. Anyone that sits down can plug it in and use it as their handset. I’ve used the speaker phone quite a bit and have found it to be reliable.

Tanjay – Nortel and Polycom

PolyCom CX700

Nortel 8540

I will state the obvious right away – the Polycom and the Nortel are pretty much the same phone so I am going to review them as one. Both went by the earlier code name of "Tanjay" prior to RTM so I’ll use that here. You can tell from the display that it runs a version of Office Communicator on the phone.

Tanjay Strengths:

1. Tanjay is it’s own device – you don’t need a laptop/PC running communicator. It’s truly a stand-alone IP phone
2. I unboxed the tanjay and plugged the Ethernet cable into a switch port at the office. It lit right up – supports power over Ethernet (PoE). That’s a MAJOR strength
3. After booting up, I was prompted to sign in. I typed my AD credentials and it logged me in – single sign-on! Another major strength
4. I didn’t have to configure a thing on the OCS side – since I was already an OCS Enterprise Voice user, all I had to do was plug the Tanjay in and sign in. No administrator configuration! This might be the best strength of all
5. The call quality was extremely good, probably the best of any OCS headset/handset that I’ve tested.
6. I was able to dial numbers from my contact list as well as numbers that I typed in that weren’t a part of my contact list.
7. I took the Tanjay home, plugged in the AC adapter, connected the Ethernet cable to my Linksys switch at home – and it worked! Remote telephony without a VPN. This was unbelievable. No configuration on the administrative side at all.
8. The little fake I-Pod scrolly wheel works pretty well.
9. The finger print reader works well

Tanjay Weaknesses

1. The firmware that came with the phone was not the latest. That’s ok… So I went to update the firmware…. Yeah… it’s not a pretty sight. The process involves setting up SharePoint and installing a new role on my front end server. I won’t go into more detail than that. It’s a poor process.
2. Without the newest version of firmware, my missed calls indicator and my voicemail indicator don’t function as intended
3. The touchscreen keyboard that you need to use for sign-in is a little small. Not bad, mind you, but if you have sausage fingers, this ain’t the phone for you.
4. There is a fingerprint reader that allows you to lock/unlock the screen – the reader itself works well (as mentioned in the "strengths" category – but I wish that it would make it remembers my fingerprint and associates it with my username/password for signing in. Unfortunately it’s just for locking/unlocking the phone
5. If you don’t have a certificate on your Edge server that has been issued by one of the major CA’s the Tanjay won’t let you sign in remotely. You can’t add root CAs to the phone to make it accept other certs. I think that if you publish the cert in AD, sign in on the corporate lan, then send the phone out, it may work ok. But I haven’t tried that yet.
6. With the outdated version of firmware, conference and transfer were a bit dodgy – I really shouldn’t comment on this until I’ve managed to upgrade the firmware.
7. Like the catalina, the esthetics are lacking. The Nortel phone for sure looks exactly like the AM radio that my grandpa would always have tuned to Cubs games in his living room. The polycom isn’t much better.
8. If you sign into the tanjay from home, then leave for the day, your presence shows you as "away" to everyone. Not bad… but some people who try to IM you anyway are in for a surprise " the person you are trying to reach is not logged into a device that can receive IM" or some such message. Not a fan.

In all – I REALLY like both phones, the biggest gripe is with the Tanjay and it’s stupid firmware. Other than that, I’ve been quite impressed. I use the catalina more often because I’m more mobile, so I’ll need to give the Tanjay more airtime.

That’s it for my quick review. I’d love to hear what other people have found with these phones.