pagers

[David Skolnik]

Robert-

One of the first things I did when I came here 11 or 12 years ago was to
get beepers for myself and staff (2 at that time).   It made it alot easier
for me to be reached, mainly by my wife.   These were numeric pagers, ie,
they showed the phone number, but not alph-numeric, which will show a
number or a message.  When we went to a voice mail system,  did what you
describe, that is, program the voice mail to send a notice to an off-site
or pager number.  That system can probably work if you set up an effective
voice mail menu which offers the option of urgent / not-urgent messages.
The problem can arise if you get paged every time you get a phone call, and
have to stop what you are doing to find a phone... unless, of course, you
also have a cellular phone.  Then you just have to find a place where it
works.  

For inter-staff communication, I am looking into some low-power walkie
talkies.  Motorola has a line of "Talkabout" radios that are light and have
a range of features.  I experimented with some from RadioShack.  They
worked very well in concept, but , perhaps because I am in a big city, the
amount of interference  made them immpossible to leave on.   The more
powerful units require FCC licensing and are too heavy.   With walkie
talkies, unlike telephones, your only  recurring expense is batteries...a
big expense if you actually  make use of them.  Rechargeable would be the
only way to go.  If I make a decision on mine, I'll let you know.  Good luck.

David Skolnik
Manhattan School of Music
212-749-2802 , ext. 355 /455
dskolnik@msmnyc.edu


At 03:57 PM 5/3/99 -0400, you wrote:
>
>Their are 2 full-time techs here at MSU, most often going in completely
>different directions.  So, the Chair of the Piano Faculty suggested we get
>pagers to keep in touch with one another, and so that 3 or 4 key people in
>the School of Music and Performing Arts Center could have access to us in
>emergencies.
>
>The pagers we have don't show the phone number of the person calling. Instead
>the caller leaves a message on a voice-mail recording which in turn
"beeps" us,
>and we then call our voice-mailbox to retrieve the message.  It takes about 2
>minutes to complete the process.
>
>So far, so good.  Has anyone else had good/bad experiences with this
degree of
>accessibility?
>
>Robert Murphy
>Piano Technician,
>Michigan State University
>