To answer your questions in order:

3. You still should have the modem so that anyone can assist you with remote programming and diagnostics. God forbid that something happens to this guy. I am not sure how you might be, but my customers would never be willing to wait until we can "swing by" for troubleshooting. Not to mention that there may be instances where the manufacturer may need to check something for the vendor if troubleshooting is necessary.

4. I agree with the potential vendor on this issue. The gas tube protection installed by the telco are usually is sufficient and property insurance will usually cover any damage beyond it. Although these are only required for personnel and property protection, they do a pretty good job of grooming surges. We don't include any additional surge protection devices unless absolutely mandated by the customer. It seems as if we have more problems with these devices than without.

5. There are two versions of the internal voice mail for this system. One uses flash (solid state) memory for storage and can expand to six hours of storage and 64 mailboxes. Flash memory is similar to what you see used with MP3 players and digital cameras. That's usually more than enough for a typical small business, two or even more.

There's also another version of voice mail that uses a hard drive for memory storage. Certainly, this will add a tremendous amount of capacity, but it's still limited to eight simultaneous callers (ports). I seriously doubt that you'd need something with this capacity, as it is clearly ten times+ what your actual needs will likely ever be.

Ed Vaughn, MBSWWYPBX