I am posting my amazon review here to share my experience with the unit. Any feedback would be welcomed!!
I received my unit a week ago and also noticed that it did not include a manual. I assumed that OBi figured that most customers that purchase the OBi508vs are familiar with their products and also planned to have a online guide. It now appears that they just put a quick start guide online for this unit.
The first thing that surprised me when I set up the unit (I have previously purchased a few OBi202's) was the lack of OBiWiFi support. I contacted their support and they replied quickly explaining that the potential for high bandwidth usage may affect call quality, so they chose not to currently support it. They did, however, explain that I could connect the 508 to my existing 202's port and connect wirelessly through the 202's OBiWiFi, but they don't recommend I do this unless absolutely necessary. I doubt that 8 concurrent calls would be smooth over WiFi too. They later stated that OBi may add the WiFi feature to the 508 at a later date, in spite of the issues. I just wish they made that clear at purchase. It would not have changed my mind about the purchase, but would have saved me time because I thought the unit was defective since I couldn't get ObiWiFi to work. I now have an extra ObiWiFi dongle.
Even though in May 2014, Google Phone will stop working with Obi, I believe my Callcentric / localphone service is inexpensive enough to justify continued support of Obi products. After extensive research, they are the providers that give the best value, in my opinion. The 508 is new and they have only recently released their first 508 firmware upgrade. If the 508 turns out to be as solid of a product as the 202, Obi will have a big winner.
Edit on 01/15/2014: After using the unit for a few days, I found a couple of bugs in the firmware. Tech Support is very helpful and responsive and seemed to fix some bugs that I reported. Main problems are with SP5-8. I have learned that you can only have four service providers (Callcentric, localphone, etc.) but can choose 8 Sip lines within the four. Would be better if it was like the 202 where each sip slot was totally independent. Also, there is no easy way to use ** codes to get to the higher ports (SP5-8) because they conflict with other services. For example, **8 is calling out to BT so **8 cant use SP8 port.
A bigger issue is that the unit loses its connection (usually overnight) and requires a reboot to go back on line. I tried to assign a static IP to see if that helps. Wont know until tomorrow.
I feel the product has great potential but it seems like the firmware is not quite ready for prime time. An admin guide specific for the 508 would be helpful. Well, back to beta testing the 508, for now!!
