(Lack of) Distinctive Ring Support

[Mike]

:rant

Why'd MS drop distinctive ring support??? I don't want to
roll back to 98, and I cannot afford a hardware sniffer -
this feature was quite useful in the faxing realm, and I
wish MS would reconsider.

:/rant

Mike

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

It's never been supported under the NT platform O/Ses.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;272943

Cari
www.coribright.com

 

[Lem]

It's never been supported under the NT platform O/Ses.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;272943

Cari
www.coribright.com

I think the point is that MS used to consider the NT-based OSes as
"business" oriented. The assumption probably was that a business would
have separate fax lines or some other method of serving faxes that is
more robust than a shared phone line with distinctive ring. The problem
is that MS has now migrated the NT-based OS to home users (i.e., WinXP
Home) who typically do not want or can't afford a dedicated fax line.
Thus, the OP's point is well-taken -- MS should implement support for
distinctive ring either in a future XP service pack or at the very least
in "Longhorn" (or whatever the next gen OS is going to be called). (It
also would be nice if the fax app itself was a little more
"full-featured".)