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We spend a lot of time working from home - and with kids running around part of the time we needed to upgrade our phones. We also had the problem with our old analogue cordless that anytime you get near electronic equipment there was so much noise you couldn't hear the person at the other end. This was especially true with computers, which wasn't good when talking to clients!

DECT was obviously the way to go - with two handsets - one for the study and one for the living room. What I really wanted was one into which I could plug a headset so I could type and talk at the same time - this narrowed down the choice and in the end I decided to go for the Panasonic KXTCD517. I ordered online - from Amazon, which turned out to be the cheapest online price I could find. I ordered just before Christmas - but they arrived within a few days and we've had them now for a few months.

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The phones have lots of features - although I'm still disappointed that the build quality/feel of the phones isn't up to the standard of mobiles. They still feel a liittle plasticy! That's a minor critisism and was true of all the phones I looked at before buying. The user interface is however a long way behind that of my Nokia 6310i mobile, but it does the job. The phone has a long list of features, including:

• Speaker for hands-free operation. This actually worked very well, with not too much background noise. One downside of this is that having put a call onto hands-free there appears to be no obvious way to take it back off again. This seems to be an over sight. The only way I could find to achieve this with an incoming call was to hang-up and then answer again - not ideal!
• Intercom so you can call the other handset. The main use for this (and believe me it is useful!) is to call the other handset when you've lost it and track it down from the sound!
• 2.5mm Headset socket . This was one of my main reasons for choosing this phone, although I've not got around to getting the headset yet!
• Phone book - of course! It's a real pity that these phones can't sync with a mobile address book via infra-red or with a PC. There is still far too much need to keep multiple address books up to date. The consequence of this is that I use the address book on my mobile and don't use the one of the Panasonic.
• CLI - to identify incoming call numbers. You need to sign up for this at extra cost from your phone service provider. I haven't.
  
• Ability to send SMS messages - assuming again that you've signed up for the additional service. To be honest I really don't see the point in this on a land-line with the proliferation of mobiles around. Useful I guess if you don't own a mobile - but this is a business phone and just about everyone that buys one will have a mobile.
• Answer phone. If you don't want this feature the KXTCD507EMC would appear to be an identical handset without the answer phone.

One really great point on this phone is that it uses standard AAA Ni-Mh rechargeable batteries, which cost a couple of pounds. This means you could keep a spare charged set in case you ever leave both handsets off the charger for too long. This isn't really necessary however because the battery life is superb. The handsets with moderate use only seem to need returning to the charger once a week.

On the whole - a good phone, but still some way from the quality and feel of a mobile. They do everything you could need them to - and quite a few things I'd be surprised anyone needs!

The manufacturers details can be found at http://www.panasonic.co.uk/dect/kxtcd517emcc/index.htm. The Amazon price today (12^th March 2004) is £159.99, which I think is what I paid back in December. There are plenty of cheaper DECT phones around, but I think if you need the phone for business then this phone has some very useful features that most phones don't.