As long as I have worked in my current job we have had the same "answer phone" as it was a simple to use model I bought one for my home as well.

BT Response 75 - Digital Answering Machine

I am not a big telephone user at home, none of my family are in fact - we all have mobile phones and tend to use our mobiles to be in touch with each other, but the home landline is part of our Sky package, and official phone calls and non-mobile people tend to use it to get in touch with us.

There have been times where you are waiting for an important call and really do not dare miss it. It was for this reason that I bought the answering machine.

Around four years ago I bought our machine, it was around the £35 mark, I have just had a quick search online and see that on Amazon this now retails at £30.53 (February 2013)

The machine is lightweight and portable - well, portable in as much as it needs to be near a mains power socket and close to the actual telephone wall socket

The machine is very simple to set up, you simply connect the phone cable from the machine, into the socket on your telephone if your phone has that facility, or failing that connect it into the telephone wall socket. (You might have to buy an adaptor to make the socket split two ways, one for the phone and one for the answering machine - these adaptors cost next to nothing, I have seen them in the cheap shops and Poundland)

You do have to buy a 9V battery, which is not supplied - this battery gets fitted into the back of the machine and in the event of a power cut, your messages stored on the machine are saved for up to six hours.

The machine does also come with wall fittings, should you wish to fit it to the wall permanently.

The machine has a digital display which flashes the number of messages that have been stored.

You can record your own outgoing message, which is very simple - this message can be up to 2 minutes long - however you do not have to use this facility and there is a default message already set up (Hello, your call cannot be taken at the moment, so please leave your message after the tone) or If you wish to inform callers that there is no-one available to take your call, but you do not want them to leave a message then it will say - Hello, your call cannot be taken at the moment and you cannot leave a message, so please call later.

The buttons on the front of the machine are self explanatory, Answer on/off - Play - Volume - Stop - < Skip - > Skip and Pause.

So you can listen to your messages, skip through them backwards or forwards and of course the little red button, which says delete and you can get rid of them permanently.

The final feature worth mentioning is the VIP feature, where you can set the machine to answer calls silently (do not disturb) but allows designated callers to alert you with a beep tone and try to get in touch with you...

I have to say that I don't seem to use this machine any longer as my Sky package has given me a built in/automatic answerphone - however I have kept the machine, just in case as it really is as good as new still.

Would I recommend this model, well yes, you probably won't need it any more as technology has advanced with phone providers like BT and Sky, but it works perfectly and seems to last for years.