“[...] and all those little crappy things like losing an afternoon troubleshooting your fancy outsourced IP phone system that was supposed to let you “work from anywhere.”"

That’s the big danger with a lot of the VoIP problems out there at the moment.

We purchased a VOIP system from a company called Vocalocity http://www.vocalocity.com . After purchasing three Lynksys phones for around $500, we pay $152 per month for four lines on each phone. It has great flexibility. Your calls can follow you wherever, i.e. your cellphone, another employee, etc. The voice mail system not only leaves a message on your phone but sends the message to your e-mail where you can listen to it if you are not at your desk. You can also fax through this system and receive your faxes as e-mails to keep or discard as you wish. We are very happy with this relatively inexpensive phone system. Their support team is very good, also. I like the fact that no matter where we call or how long we talk, our bill is always the same. Not so with the regular land line phone company.

I think it was good that you had to tackle this task. You sure learn alot when you do something like this.