Hi All,
I recieve between 8 to 20 telemarketing calls daily. Sometimes as late
as 10pm. I discovered this small software program which uses your PC
as a phone screener by requesting the caller to enter a 4 digit numeric
code. If there is no response the program takes a 1 minute message
and hangs up. The nice feature about this software is the computer will
play the sound of a telephone ringing when the caller uses the correct
code. You can place the other phones in your house on silent, so only
the computer rings:
http://hughesnet.net/answerguard/
There are some bugs with the software that I've tried to get the
developer to fix, but they don't seem interested. When the caller
puts in the correct code and I pickup the phone, the message won't
stop playing until finished. I have to ask the caller to wait until a
1 minute message is done. You can use your own messages
instead of the default ones, but it's difficult to do this, since they
must have a specific audio rate and lenght. The final cool thing
about this software is it will work on a PC with 166mghz processor
with a voice modem. I've used AnswerGuard! and it was quiet
around my house for a change. If anyone has some ideas about
fixing AnswerGuard or other solutions, please post them.
-black prince