Solid phone for your home office or business

If you are looking for a multi-line phone for your home based business, look no farther. The AT & T 974 is a feature packed 4 line phone. There are just way too many features for me to highlight them all, but here are a few of the more noteworthy:

1. Directory that can hold up to 200 numbers as well one touch dialing for another 52 numbers.

2. New call light and message waiting indicator. Can program different rings for different lines.

3. Caller ID for all 4 lines on a easy to read display. Very easy and convenient to scroll through calls.

4. In addition to 4 line capability, it also has 2 auxiliary ports for a modem or a fax.

5. Expandable. Designed to work as a stand alone unit or in a system of multiple units.

6. Headset compatible.

I've owned this phone for 6 months and am still pleased. It has done very well for my home office phone.

However, the phone does have a few minor irritations to it.

1. If you are speaking on one line and a call comes in on another line, what you see on the Caller ID is the call that you are on. To see the incoming caller information you must press a button on the phone to toggle the caller ID to that line.

2. The phone lacks sufficient amplification to work well with most headsets. When I plug my headsets directly into the 2.5 mm jack on the phone, my voice comes out faint and some people have trouble hearing me. I ended up going with a Plantronics headset with external amplifier and people can hear me just fine. Possibly the phone might be more compatible with an AT&T headset.

3. The voice message waiting indicator does not tell you how many messages, only that there are messages waiting.