Try Trixbox (trixbox.org) - I was able to get it up and running with virtually no Linux experience, and it's running great. There's a good support community, and excellent documentation (Google for "Trixbox Without Tears").

Best of all it's free!!!!!!!!!

"in order to transfer a call to a colleague. Instead they just say the name of the individual, and the system pops the call through."

"And as I was saying, that Joe Bloggs in accounting is a complete and utter twa... Um, hi Joe, I thought I was talking Sarah in HR, but while you on the l... Um, Sarah your back, well as I was saying that Joe Bloggs...."

........."WANKER!"

<beep> <click>

<nasal female american voice> "Please hold, this call is being diverted to Gordon Brown's extension."

No, no need to get my coat, it recognises my voice when I call it and puts itself on.

"Microsoft tries to talk its way into VoIP"

Good luck, Kro ! Probably will end up the same as last time you entered a market with working products on it. Oh, wait a minute, never happened, did it ?

If you want easy VOIP for Windows, try the excellent 3CX Phone System (www.3cx.com) No need for Linux or Microsoft proprietary hardware or software.....

X Box?

We carried out some data processing work for a call centre company.

They invested hundreds of thousands of pounds into all new completely MS based comms kit for a new call centre. It never worked properly. There were several seconds delay in connecting calls and called people would hang up after 4-5 seconds of silence after picking up the phone. There were also other problems.

Over several weeks the comms providers tried everything - but nothing fixed the problems.

Result was that the company went bust - hundreds of people dumped out of work on the next payday - without being paid.

What's galling is that MS would have actually got their money for all the server licenses.

BTW - the old unix based systems had worked flawlessly for years - just some very flashy sales people persuaded the management that Microsoft/VOIP was the way to go forward.

X Box?

Would that be the X Box that made a profit only during one quarter, once, thanks to one game? Me thinks they still have a long way to go to turn that into a going concern.

that's what Cisco Call Manager is for. it's also buggy, erratic and mysterious; it is a Windows appliance; and the support sucks out loud...so exactly like a MS product should be.

MS selling its own messaging product is redundant. it's like getting another piece of organic fertilizer, identical to the one you already have.

I thought that MS had got into bed with Nortel, with BT doing the Maintenance and Selling on the ground... is this match made in heaven over?

"Aastra, D-Link and Quanta and software from Microsoft"

If you add Acer to that list, you'd have my "DO NOT BUY FROM THESE PEOPLE" list.

Seriously, we have replaced so many Quanta sites with Cisco Call Manager, and for the price concious there's nothing like the price and ease of a new UCE520.

I like TrixBox, but we've had various issues that forums and mailing lists seem to fix a month after the customer has hit their limit and we've replaced it with Cisco.