Combining your computer with your telephone. I'm Fred Fishkin with Bootcamp, a report on computers and technology. Are you using your computer as an answering machine? If you aren't, why not? Many PCs come equipped with modems and software that can give everyone in your house their own voice mailbox. Microsoft has taken the convergence even further with a 900 megahertz cordless phone system that has lots of fun and useful features. Product Manager Scot Schulte...

"The base station of the cordless phone actually hooks into your PC and then you take the cordless handset and the charging cradle and you place that anywhere in the house. And the fact that it's cordless gives you that freedom to be able to then access that power of the PC anywhere."

For instance, the phone can keep a log of incoming and outgoing calls. The software includes an addressbook and once you've put names and numbers in....

"Simply by pushing a button on the side of the phone like...call Mom.... the PC will then do the speech recognition on that command, find the phone number that's associated with Mom and then dial it. "

Using caller ID, the phone announces by name or number who is calling. You can also use the combined technology to leave messages on your answering machine for specific callers...

"And it can treat each call differently, depending upon who is calling."

The price... under 150 dollars. You can find more information at microsoft.com/phone