POTD

POTD: Tick Tock Diner, Midtown Manhattan, NY

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If you ever visit the West Side of Manhattan, and you like an awesome breakfast, go to the Tick Tock Diner, underneath the New Yorker on Eighth Ave between West 34th and 35th streets. Or should I say the iconic Art-Deco, classic mid 20th Century style of the Wyndham owned hotel? Anyways, I had a Smore French Toast.  Something along those lines…

Enough with food porn on The Museum, but you wanted to see their phones right?

Left looks like the one for the diner, a NEC set for their Electra line, and a Mitel 5330E VOIP set with a backlit display and perhaps a Gigabit Ethernet connection! This is probably used for the hotel communications, and for the use of room service. I can say Mitel is used at these clusters of hotels, because I stayed in TRYP, and I saw my phones on the front desk…

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POTD: B&H Store, New York City

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I’ve received many B&H catalogs ether as hand me downs, and runins with people on the West Coast, or in the mailings these days, but I never made it there till October. I’m familiar with J&R in the Lower Manhattan area though.

Located on the West Side of Manhattan, just a couple blocks away from the Garment District (the off Fifth Ave stores that go from West 34th & 5th to 35th and 8th. I made the visit since it was on the way to the Javits Center, for that fluke of an East Coast NAB Show. This place is a must if you like broadcast grade A/V equipment (the enterprise class for videographers, audio, what have you.) I got studio grade headphones there, and you can buy any professional and commercial class stuff there. And if you can’t make it to New York, you can go online.

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POTD: Jacob Javits Center, Upper West Side, Manhattan

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The Jacob Javits Center, located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the urban outskirts of New York City, is where conferences are held. Much less space than say the Las Vegas Convention Center. It’s comparable size like Connecticut’s or the ones in Boston. Unlike Vegas, people are rude, uptight and do not take any selfies with showgirls. They will tell you explicitly to “not tag” them.

This was taken in October at the fall NAB Show, the convention for the National Association of Broadcasters. Unlike my visit in April, there was nothing to write home about.  In fact I spent more time outside the Javits Center

This Guest Services desk shows a Cisco 8800 series VOIP set. However, throughout my visit, my first time ever visiting the city beyond twelve hours – I saw sets that weren’t just Cisco in various businesses and organizations.

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POTD: Avaya 6408D+ Digital “Telephone” | Attitash Grand Summit Resort | Bartlett, NH

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I spotted this 6408D+ DCP telset at my last visit to the Attitash Grand Summit Resort in late October. This hotel off US302 is used mostly for conferences and skiers who want a vacation. This set was replaced in between a Labor Day week visit and the visit in late October.  This area is a space for tourist information to help a customer find a place of interest. Previously (and years before) had a generic “trimline” like set. As previously posted, it appeared there was an upgrade of refurbished sets.

What would be nice given the decline of digital office telephony, that maybe digital sets could be seen in more locations in the facility or even in the rooms, despite Avaya and their BPs jacking up the maintenance costs of digital telephones in lieu of going to VOIP for no reason.

The 6400 series sets have been known unofficially to have a “European” look (but never claimed by Lucent or Avaya directly.) While Lucent introduced the line in the late 1990s, mass deployments occurred under Avaya tenure (spun-off late 2000.) The 6400 sets probably had a large friend count with the other models in the line.  What do I mean? 6400 sets were often found in new deployments where a Definity or later MultiVantage systems would be setup. Because the 6400s were made around that time, other models like the 8400 was ether refurbished or not aggressively sold. It was not to say they couldn’t go in existing plants; just you’ll see them more obviously in new deployments after 2001.

These sets also introduced a mandatory two-wired setup (albeit with an RJ 45 jack) where a single pair of tip and ring would run on pins 4 & 5. Aux power would need two pairs with said T&R wire and another pair on pins 7 & 8 on an RJ 45 plug.

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POTD: New Hobby Lobby

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img9912 This newer version of the NEC Electra Key Telephone was found at a local Hobby Lobby that had recently opened. Hobby Lobby is basically the K-Mart of arts and crafts stores. Their footprint is probably quadrupled compared to an AC Moore or Michaels. Coincidentally the stores that Hobby Lobby filled in my area were former KMart stores. Other stores in the area use this system.

POTD: Avaya Red 8410 DCP Telset Attitash Grand Summit Resort | Bartlett, NH

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This was taken at the front desk at the Attitash Grand Resort Conference Center in Bartlett, NH. This area in the building is where you can only spot the digital sets. The nearby bar, conference rooms and rooms use analog sets. There is no evidence of any attendant consoles ether.

I’ve frequented this facility during the spring time over the last four years for an annual conference. I no longer attend, and I like the place, so I went for the vacation this week. The people I used to see at the front desk were not working (or is no longer working there) to see if I could see the switch room.

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POTD: Whole Foods Market Bedford, New Hampshire

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In recent weeks, the world’s newest Whole Foods Market opened in Bedford, NH. Built on top of the legendary Wayfarer Inn (known more during the Primary Election years), it’s also within hundreds of feet of the now torn down Macy’s.

As proof from Joe the UCX Guy from Chicago, many Whole Foods stores are Cisco shops. Interestingly, the WFM in Nashua, just miles on the Everett Turnpike, is wired for TDM telephony using Toshiba’s Strata system (opened in 2014 to replace a former Market Basket.) Building was totally gutted and rebuilt mostly from the ground up.

The store in Bedford is mixed with 7942s and the 6902s at the cashier’s lane. Paging works, as teenage girls don’t know how to lower their octaves and learn how to page professionally.

The 7900s are still in the market, despite the more cheaper quality sets being deployed more and more. The 7900s are in a depreciation mode. Current generations are all multi lines, Java based and/or colored displays and I was surprised to see a 7942 because I believe its End of Sale.

I snapped two pictures, one showing how much characters you can use to describe your telephone extension. If the characters can’t fit on the top black colored indication bar, it will break the description up in two screens

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Personally, these devices are just “endpoints” – they are PCs acting as telephones. Sure Mitel, and Avaya and others sell the same thing (and acts the same way), but for sales people or the accountants, its just another device attached to the Internet and it shouldn’t be treated special like a office telephone. These phones are not easy to manage outside of expensive Cisco solutions or if you like to code and reverse engineer – be my guest! I feel like the 7900s were always a 2554 with Internet connectivity and a great audio quality of its SCCP signaling.

Other than that, Cisco just keeps on winning on selling “free” gear and report them as “profits” by smooching up to the CIOs and heads of IT departments at the Fortune 500 companies. You think I am kidding???

POTD: Ralph Lauren 5th Avenue Store

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From little of what I know about Ralph Lauren, it appears they are an Avaya Red shop in some capacity (Joe the UCX Guy featuring an enterprise class) and my local outlet using a Partner (or I should use it in air quotes.)

I have my own opinions of Mister Ralph. a) I can never afford his stuff (the local Macy’s is once in a blue moon) b) I find it more suitable for older people (that Denim and Supply line, I mean really?) if not for older people then more Country Club-types. And of course c) he legally changed his last name from a borderline expletive to allegedly a film crush with the now late Lauren Bacall? Also am I supposed to be pronouncing his name like the female given name or the long e at the end?

Well anyways, here is a Siemens set taken from the sales floor on Saturday. The interesting question would be is did they go to Siemens or were they legacy ROLM users?

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On the other hand here are some sets I didn’t (or wasn’t able to) capture but noticed

The Times Square Aeropostale uses an Avaya Blue Norstar system. For many years the non flagship Aeropostale stores used some analog Centrex, MPLS, or maybe VOIP terminated to analog phone service, up until the last couple months they had fallen into the Cisco bandwagon. Aeropostale is doing very lousy and is in danger of ether going out of business or being sold. Friday’s close was around a couple US dimes. What turned me away from there was all the shirts having these stupid embroidered fabric that is better for little kids. It’s hard to wash, then you have “loose” fabric, etc.

A Ruby Tuesday on the outskirts of Times Square had a Norstar system. (Nice service while I had lunch with the mother.)

The Apple Store on 5th Avenue (lousy service just like if you’re in the burbs. Another topic for another day) had clerks carrying around Cisco 7921 like wireless sets. This isn’t a surprise. Cisco has crept its way through Apple over the years, and now it’s gone to their VOIP or telephones. Most Apple Stores are still an Avaya IP Office shop with most of the wired sets tucked into drawers on the sales floors.

A Best Buy where I got better service, downtown a few blocks had Cisco.

The operations for the Fox News Channel still uses Avaya 8400 and 6400 sets. From what I know at the 1211 6th Ave facility, that the few first floors of the building are for FNC, Floors 7 to 8 (or 9?) is for The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s.

Once located at the World Financial Center (using a Meridian 1 system), they went to VOIP when the built the new facilities within 1211. An interesting note, on a blog I once found a picture of  Roger Ailes, the head of FNC having both an 8434 and a Cisco set. Without getting into a political discussion, it would not be a surprise he has a direct line to a paper that could favor his views. (WSJ is a joke today and I am a big fan of markets and corporate news.)

I did not set foot inside 30 Rock, but I’ve seen on MSNBC on cable with more and more Cisco 8900 sets. It’s apparent that NBC wants to do away with Avaya at least at their New York operations more and more. They relocated their Southland facilities from Avaya in Burbank to Cisco in Universal City 2 years ago, their other hubs in Texas has been wired to Cisco and I can go on and on seeing yet another customer of Avaya Red disappear.

Many financial institutions are using Cisco (walked by Capital One Bank, TD Bank, JPMorgan, etc.)

POTD: Macy’s 34th Street – Avaya Red 8403 DCP Terminal

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Yesterday, I posted pics from my trip to Manhattan on Saturday. To my surprise I saw a lot of Avaya Red terminals despite Cisco selling VOIP sets like they are generic IP devices that corporate accounts pay little to none (allegedly) for.

The 8403 is a display-less set, designed for “walk up users” (to use a modern day cliche) or people who do not need functionality of a fully blown 8405 or 8410 terminal. The set supports up to 3 call appearances and if a user desperately needs features with indicators, one can program a feature (or two) but the set would act as a single appearance terminal.

It’s cousin set is the 7401, because it shares similarities to the 12 button personal features assignment. Someone can have up to 12 functions for abbreviated dialing, features, etc by hitting the Feature button and hit a single digit on the dial pad. There wasn’t a similar set till the late 2000s when Avaya released two sets, the 1403 and 1603 both for DCP and IP respectively, but ironically this require both to be run behind an IP Office, and not their enterprise PBX systems. It’s not to say one could reload firmware with the 1603 with some SIP firmware (which I believe it can work) and run it against Avaya’s SES services, and claim it to be a generic SIP set. These models furthers more irony because the 8403 was incompatible with Merlin systems anyways.

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