Rating: 
Summary: Poorly designed, poorly implemented
Review: ... The sound is horrible and the thing talks way too much, and much too slowly. It must take 3 seconds to tell me that my message has been deleted - EVERY time I delete a message.The thing that REALLY irks me is that once you listen to a message, the counter decrements so that no one else knows that the message is on the machine. I have to write down messages for my wife to check the machine and vice-versa. There have to be better/cheaper machines on the market.
Rating:
Summary: Poorly designed, poorly implemented
Review: ... The sound is horrible and the thing talks way too much, and much too slowly. It must take 3 seconds to tell me that my message has been deleted - EVERY time I delete a message. The thing that REALLY irks me is that once you listen to a message, the counter decrements so that no one else knows that the message is on the machine. I have to write down messages for my wife to check the machine and vice-versa. There have to be better/cheaper machines on the market.
Rating: 
Summary: Guaranteed to confuse your callers, loose calls now!
Review: Basically, this machine is funcional for its purpose and has a few good ideas I find usefull. But on the OGM, you have to tell your caller to press * (star) then the number of the mailbox. It would just make sense to press the number without a * or pound or whatever! (Did you get that SONY?) Some people will use their common sense and just press the number of the mailbox they want; the machine responds by recording the message in mailbox 1 and all you hear is the sound of the number being pressed over and over again as the caller can't find out what went wrong! This has happened a lot, even if you clearly state that * must be pressed first. "Press star one, Now!" Sound quality is poor for both OGM and ICM. Hint: call the machine from another phone to record your OGM! I only use this machine because I got it for free as a gift. The machine makes a lot of BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! noise every time you press a button and that gets anoying fast. The voice prompts make the machine easy to use for first time uses; but because you cannot skip them later on, they become time wasters. Nice try for SONY, but a lot of work needs to done with this machine. SONY: call me when you have debugged this machine and don't use * or pound or 0, and don't foreget to press Star then 1.
Rating: 
Summary: Not too bad but poor price performance value
Review: Considering the product is from Sony, one would expect superb sound quality esp since Sony made its name in the audio technology industry. I tested the unit I bought in Sep 2001. The sound quality is not as bad as that commented by other reviewers perhaps the chip set was replaced. I opened up the unit. Inside are static memory chips hence no separate battery is required and when the ac adapter is unplugged the messages are all retained. Sound quality is probably the most important criteria. The sound is recorded acceptably although words with a hissing letter like the s in please tends to create static distortions more acutely than other machines such a the GE 29868 which is cheaper than this Sony but sounds more clear. Part of the distortion is attributable to the speaker in the Sony unit which has a lower dynamic frequency thus producing a deeper voice but does not produce higher frequencies of the vocal spectrum clearly. The GE unit does a better job. Interestingly when listening to the unit from the caller's end does not produce as much distortion for words with 's' hissing sounds than it sounds on the replay on the unit itself thus indicating that the speaker is partly causing static clicks and crackles. The outgoing voice message is clearly audible (if you speak close to the unit when recording) but sounds lower pitched similar to other digital units with lower sampling rates or poor audio compression. Note that the microphone is inverted in the unit so if you flip the unit upside down and speak into the microphone hole underneath the unit, your voice sounds more clear, loud and crisp and with slightly less distortion.
Rating: 
Summary: Great
Review: Easy to use. Many nice features! I like how it beeps when you have new mesages. Remote access is simple and straightforward with voice that guides you. Don't really use the 3 mailboxes though.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Plan on Keeping This a Long Time
Review: Extremely compact, above average in ease in out-of-the box setup. Playback voice quality is below average. Owned 13 mos. then the unit died (no display, power brick volts OK). Sony's warranty 1 year from invoice date (mine was on backorder 2 weeks). Great price, but now I need another. :(
Rating:
Summary: Buying this was a mistake!
Review: I bought my Sony TAM-100 on 6/30/01 and got one as terrible as all the ones which have been reviewed poorly by others. I just wished I had checked these reviews before I bought it! I thought the Sony name was totally reliable, and liked the size, price, and appearance of the machine. I also love our Sony phone. My daughter had to make about 10 attempts to come up with a recording that seemed acceptable. (Her friend kept calling and checking the message, telling us she couldn't understand it, or it sounded as if there were 8 voices, or the voice was going up and down.) When we come home now, about 2/3 of the messages are blank; either they're too soft for us to hear, or the caller gave up because the message was unintelligible, or the machine didn't record the message. When my mother-in-law called, she called back because she didn't think she could have gotten the right number. My mother said the message was very faint. Also, the robotic voice is very annoying, telling us more than we need to know. If there is a 3 lit up, I can figure out that there are 3 messages without the voice SLOWLY announcing this! We are going to return the machine tomorrow. I thought maybe we just got a defective machine, but from the reviews it looks like a lot of them are like this. Have we gone to new technology before it has been perfected? Our old tape machine worked perfectly until it wore out! What's wrong with you, Sony--your products are usually so reliable!
Rating:
Summary: The most annoying answering machine ever
Review: I bought this and used it for about 6 hours until I couldn't take it anymore. (Yes, I do have a low tolerance for a nuisance such as this.) It takes forever to check or scan through messages because someone thought it would be cool to make a machine that talks to you. Ugh. Get the Panasonic, it has a much more user-conscious design.
Rating:
Summary: Poor Quality
Review: I bought this Answering Machine thinking that it would be a good machine as it's from Sony. As well I have a cordless phone which is great and an Alarm clock all great from Sony. This machine is [junk], Right now it's still in the box and I am back to the voice mail from my telephone company. One thing I did like on the unit was the "Beep" to let you know you had a message and that you didn't have to acutally go to the machine to find out that you had no messages. The pre-recorded greeting was also a nice feature one that I used becuase people could not understand what I was saying in to the machine when I recroded my greeting. Overall good design but poor quality....
Rating:
Summary: Don't buy this maching
Review: I bought this answering machine when my AT&T manufactured one (that I had owned for five years) broke. This sony machine is terrible. The worst feature is the recording of our message asking people to leave their name and number. It is scratch, and very difficult to hear.
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