You may have seen articles about many different and strange products offered by Microsoft in the past. A mouse-like joystick designed for playing RTS games and, more recently, an interactive Barney plush are also included in this long list.
One of the most interesting members of the list was a cordless phone that Microsoft released for home-office or business users, long before smartphones. The most attractive feature of this phone was that it needed to be connected to your Windows PC for some extra features.
Microsoft Cordless Phone System
The company first announced the device called Microsoft Cordless Phone System (Microsoft Wireless Phone System) on October 6, 1998. “The Microsoft Cordless Phone System is a 900 MHz phone designed for consumers looking for a convenient, versatile tool to manage their home-based personal and business calls. Developed by combining Microsoft’s software and hardware expertise, the Microsoft Wireless Phone System extends the functionality of the Caller ID service offered by regional telephone companies and provides some entirely new capabilities.
When you bought the device, there was a cordless phone and a charging socket inside the box. It also had a base station connected to both the telephone line and the PC via a serial port. The phone’s main selling point was also this base station, which allowed it to connect to a PC and use Microsoft’s Call Manager software.
Some of the things Call Manager could do to add functionality to wireless telephony were listed as follows: “The software’s Advanced Caller ID features allow users to create personalized greeting messages for different callers and block unwanted callers while allowing high priority callers to call. The Caller ID Announcement feature allows users to hear who is calling through the handset speaker before picking up the phone.”
It also supported voice commands
The phone even supported simple voice commands like Siri, Alexa or Cortana. According to Microsoft, “For example, when you divert the phone with the command ‘Call my father’, the system will recognize this command as an instruction to call the number listed for ‘Dad’. ‘Training’ voice command functions is unnecessary, as the Microsoft voice recognition technology in the Microsoft Cordless Phone System can accurately recognize the voices of different users. Additional voice commands such as ‘return to call’ or ‘delete message’ allow users to scroll through phone messages and retrieve them easily, quickly and efficiently from the system’s handset.”
Also, this software was logging all outgoing or incoming calls. If you were away from home and your phone received a voicemail, the software could send an alert to your mobile or pager, and then you could use another phone or a pay phone to receive that voicemail.
The PC system requirements for Microsoft Wireless Phone were as follows: “To take full advantage of Microsoft Wireless Phone System features, users will need a PC with Pentium 90 or higher processor running Windows 95 or Windows 98 operating system. The PC must have an available serial port, 16 MB available RAM (32 MB recommended), 30 MB to 100 MB hard disk space, a CD-ROM drive, 256 color monitor and adapter, and a 16-bit Windows compatible sound card with microphone and speakers or headphones.”
Expensive price was the end
However, the Microsoft Cordless Phone was not a sales success when it was released in 1998. This was probably one of the reasons why $199.95 for a cordless phone was considered too expensive at the time.
Another reason was that in order to take full advantage of all the PC enhanced features, the PC had to be always running and the Call Manager software had to be active. The Caller ID features, voice command, and voicemail system also couldn’t work without a computer.
After a while, the Microsoft Cordless Phone left the shelves almost unnoticed by anyone.
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