Answer the cell phone on a land line

(Credit: Grace Digital)

If you're an apartment dweller in Manhattan or San Francisco, you might as well skip this item because it'll probably seem utterly useless. But if you're in any other part of the country--with an abode that's more than a closet-sized studio--this device might actually come in handy.

The "Xlink Cellular Gateway" is a networking hub that lets you take your land-line calls on your mobile phone and vice-versa. That means if you leave your Vertu "Signature Cobra" in your library while retiring to the billiards parlor, you won't miss any important cell calls from the broker.

The $170 Xlink works with up to three mobile handsets as long as they have Bluetooth connections, according to Coolest-Gadgets. And if you misplace your cellie as often as we do, it'll save the cost of getting one of those remote locator devices.

[jchord]

Why not use Grand Central?

Okay, so GrandCentral is free and provides similar functionality. I give out my GrandCentral number and have it setup to ring my cell phone or my home phone or both at the same time ... and again, I don't shell out almost 200 bucks for it....

[kevin.talbot]

Worked like crap for me

I bought one of these based on several positive reviews. I was never able to get it to work properly, even after getting a new one from the manufacturer (which took over 3 weeks).

We moved into a a new house and I decided to drop our land line. I was able to get our old landline number transferred from Qwest to AT&T with the great support of a local AT&T store. This was no small feat as we now have a 206 area code phone working in the new 425 area code at the new place (only 10 miles away but we have 4 area codes in the greater seattle area). I got a free Nokia phone from AT&T but had to sign a 2 year contract on this new line, but it was only $10 a month since we were adding a line to an existing family plan.

I tried for 2 months to get the xlink to work but finally gave up. The recurring problem was the bluetooth link between the cell phone and xlink would break and I'd have to re-pair our phones to the xlink. The new cell phone we had for the house was permanently on the charger and stored right next to the xlink (this was the replacement for our our land line). This is the one that un-paired several times per week. When this happened, when people called they could not get through to the answering machine we had setup through the xlink since the nokia cell "home" phone was now disconnected from the xlink.

I had the xlink replaced and tried several other phones with bluetooth and all had the same problem. Every one would loose the BT pairing every day or so. Everyone blamed everyone else (phone manufacturers said the xlink was bad, xlink blamed the cell phones).

I would up out $170 for piece of junk that did not work as advertised. Xlink would not refund my money nor would the onliner retailer where I got it. When it worked it was cool - it worked as advertised but it consistenly lost connection to the phones which made it useless for me since we could not count on it working right

if you try this device, be sure to have a 60-90 day money back guarantee so you don't have the same crappy experience I had.

[cellking]

This box works great. It is better than grand central because I was able to cancel my phone line and save that money every month. I was using my cell phone all the time anyways, so why not.
Now with the XLINK wired in all the phones throughout my house keep working even though I dont even have a telephone line. That is amazing!

[ihelix]

I purchased the Xlink BT and it is a great device for our family(cell phone users); we wanted to cut the telephone landline to our homes, but we still wished to use traditional handsets.

Our cell phone plans are cheap and offer more minutes than we could ever use, but the ringers are not loud enough to hear everywhere in our home and we generally do not carry the cell phones around when at home. The cell phones keep getting smaller and sometimes a larger more traditional handset is more comfortable for extended use.

Easy setup
I paired our Blackberry 8700 and Motorola RAZR2 V9m within 10 seconds and plugged the XLink into the house telephone wiring.

Every time we walk into the house, the cell phones automatically link to the XLink and we can now use the traditional home phones we already had installed. If a cell phone call comes in...all the phones ring and we can pick up the call on any phone; we can also pick up any phone and make an outbound call using the cell phone link...no extra steps needed and is very transparent to the end user.

To respond to an earlier post; I use Grandcentral as well, but it cannot accomplish what I wanted...have the cell phones ring to the house phones and cut the landline.

The price has been cut to $69 for the XLink BT and $99 for the XLink BTN (allows for landline connection as well as cell phone) I am not affiliated with this company in any way, just impressed with their product.

[amyatomicstudios]

Yea there are lots of little boxes like that, they all work the same but...isn't the idea to be mobile while you answer calls? why have a cell p hone number go to a land line? wouldn't you want it the other way around? I don't know.. "Second Voice":http://www.secondvoice.com These guys have a similar service where they can route 2 lines to one cell phones, works better than a box of some sort because you don't need to buy anything extra for the service, you just pay for the service. which is cool i guess, you should check it out though, might be a good fit for some other people...???