SOHO, Linux-compatible answering machine?

Are there any SOHO answering machines that'll talk to Linux?

Being able to initiate calls from a Linux computer would be great, but
I'd settle for just being able to check my messages over USB or ethernet,
one ogg/wav/mp3/whatever per message.

I don't think I have time to go the asterisk or vgetty route. I
especially don't want something I'll have to fix/rebuild on every OS
upgrade.

Thanks!

Dan Stromberg wrote:

> Are there any SOHO answering machines that'll talk to Linux?

Some of the Fritzboxes have an internal answering machine, so if you
perhaps need a WLAN/WiFi DSL VoIP router with USB host along with the
answering machine, you could get one of these.
<http://www.avm.de/en/Produkte/FRITZBox/FRITZ_Box_Fon_WLAN_7270/index.php>

It's a lot more than an answering machine, so if you don't need most of
the other functionality, it's probably way too expensive.

> Being able to initiate calls from a Linux computer would be great, but
> I'd settle for just being able to check my messages over USB or ethernet,
> one ogg/wav/mp3/whatever per message.

You can initiate calls with JFritz, a free (GPL) Java program that works
well in Linux. It's also possible to use the web interface to initiate a
call. You can grab the messages from the answering machine via ftp, or
have the Fritzbox send mails with the voice messages.

Regards...
Michael