A Great Use For An Old PC
Connected to my
phone line and the internet, this has proven to be a very nice setup
for reducing the number of useless telemarketing and robo-calls that
are growing so rapidly in numbers much to the dismay of those who
thought that the National Do-Not-Call registry would actually make a
difference, these criminals continue to make unsolicited calls with
total disregard for the registry.
Accessing the headless system for purposes of maintenance, updates and archives that PhoneTray produces is a snap from my other pc's by using the Remote Desktop capabilities.
PhoneTray software,
after the first ring if it determines that the call is spam will
deliver either a message to the caller that you can select or can
give a feedback tone that will indicate a disconnected line to the
caller. One other benefit that I have also thought of is that if you have an actual case that you are able to press charges against a company for abusing your right to have them stop calling you, this logs all the calls coming in on your line with number, date, name if available, and time. All the records you need are there ready to be sent to the printer. It has significantly reduced the number of trash calls that I
receive on a daily basis, the effort I have put into the project has
paid off, and the one time cost of about $30 (you can at times get it
on a special like I did around Christmas time I think it was $10 off)
for the PhoneTray Pro software has been money well spent.
The beauty
of the whole system is that you can make use of an old computer that
you may have laying around that is too slow for any other use or
purchase a low end, entry level pc to use. If you have a pc that is a
considerable workhorse and is good at multi-tasking it is a simple
installation and running a phone line to a modem to get the ball
rolling.
