Telephone problems - You might just need new batteries

I love chatting to people on the phone. Sometimes for too long - but recently I started to have problems even with short calls, or even just pressing the 'green button' would cancel the call. If you want to know the answer, by pass the following witterings and reminiscences and go to the last paragraph!

I really thought we would need to get a new telephone system. Well we have got used to 'systems' which means several hand sets, and charger stations, with answerphone, intercom etc.

If it was just me, I was thinking that I would have liked to have reverted to a standard plug in phone, with no batteries, and I can't remember when that was. Even our 'emergency' phone which is just a plug in has a battery for the memory function.

For sure my parents had the straight forward phone when I was really young. Just like learning your name and address, our telephone number in Mauritius : 939, is etched in my mind. I guess there were less than 1000 people connected to the system then. It soon changed to 43939, and the number kept growing and growing, as more and more people connected to the system. I can't remember what sort of phone it was, but I think you had to go through a telephonist.

In those days, children very rarely got to speak to anyone on the phone. Just in my lifetime, it has changed from this, to many children having their own mobile phone, and being able to be connected where ever they are. This is nearly as big a technology jump as the ones my grandfather lived through, well perhaps not so great, but it effects many more people on a daily basis. I was staying with my grand parents and I remember being kept awake by my grand father to watch the first man land on the moon. My grandfather was really excited, and I remember him explaining to me that as a a young man he had read in the papers about the Wright Brothers taking to the skies in a flying machine and in his own life time men were now travelling and landing on the moon. I guess there will be scientists out there, who would say that if it wasn't for the race to the moon, then we would not have satellites, and therefore super efficient telephone and computer systems owe much to the 'space race' .

So I started to look, and thought I would like a really simple telephone: one that just plugged into the phone socket, with no batteries etc. Then I thought eeekkkkkkkk I would have to look up numbers each time etc etc.

Having surfed the net and got pretty overwhelmed on what was out there, I reverted to the mind set of:

Is there a problem, can it be fixed, how can it be fixed, what must I do to fix it, and do then do it!

I found out that new batteries were needed. They only last between 1 and 3 years. I searched and searched for the original type of battery, but the new telephone systems take different powered ones. You need special batteries, and then you have to find someone who stocks them. I found a site on the web: Commutech which explained the symptoms and need for battery renewal, and had the type of battery I was looking for, though it was a generic type. The postage was free, and they were with me within two working days.

I was telling my friend Marie-Claire about this, and she said she wished she had known this as a relative of hers had just gone out to buy a new system, as she had been having the same problems. So if you read this, do pass on the message that if your phone is performing poorly then most probably new batteries will solve the problem, and hopefully there will be fewer phones being thrown away.