Since last year’s VON, Linksys has graduated from a section of Cisco’s booth to its own booth. Several new devices made their debut this week.

First out of the box is the color screen, 6-line SPA962 phone.

Keeping with Linksys’ aim to build useful applications into the phone, the SPA962 comes with an RSS feed that offers several topical feeds for news as well as traffic and weather. It’s easy to see how WebEx could fit into this picture, for example, by integrating business applications like Salesforce.com right into the phone. The street price for the SPA962 is expected to be around $320.

The optional SPA932 sidecar delivers one-touch call transfer and line status for all other extensions.

To turn a single broadband line into a phone line, the new SPA8000 8-port ATA provides RJ-21 port to interface with a traditional PBX, as well as the eight RJ-11 ports for analog phones. The SPA8000 also delivers IP media loopback for automatic line testing, and SIP over TLS to offer the same level of security for phone calls as online banking transactions. The SPA8000 is expected to sell for around $300.

Designed to be provisioned and configured remotely by a service provider, the AG310 ADSL gateway with VoIP delivers VoIP and home networking in a single device. Calls can also be redirected to the PSTN via an FXO port. The AG310 will retail around $135. A wireless version is in the works.

The company is also releasing version 5.1 firmware for the SPA line, which includes configurable language selection as well as new security and reliability features.

The Linksys SPA962 Configuration Wizard is the latest addition to the Voxilla VoIP Device Configuraiton Wizard family.

This new configuration wizard has expanded service provider support and allows configuration of all six extensions.

Linksys SPA962

It’s often said that the small things make all the difference. In the case of the new Linksys SPA962 IP phone - announced today at VON - it’s the phone’s larger, color display that makes all the difference between the SPA962 and its closely related sibling, the SPA942.

So what’s the big deal? Why does a phone need a bigger screen, let alone a color display?

Quite simply, it makes the phone a whole lot simpler to use. A brighter background and more contrast mean no more squinting to see the display. And more real estate on the screen – in this case about four times as much - means a much more intuitive user interface.

For example, instead of cryptic abbreviations in small black letters, the SPA962’s six-line, high-resolution display is roomy enough to print out full words. The letters are large and clear enough against the light blue background so you can read the screen without magnifying glasses.

“Most people never will have to look at the user guide with this phone,” comments Ken Moll, Linksys Product Manager for IP Phones and ATAs. And this is just a start. Linksys plans further enhancements to make it even more user-friendly, according to Moll.

Those people who actually mastered the Byzantine sequences of keystrokes needed to operate the SPA841 needn’t worry that their skills are outdated, though. They will still work with the SPA962. The important thing is that new users never have to learn those sequences.

The SPA962 will retail for about $320, which makes it pricier than the SPA942. The price is also about $100 more than the comparable Polycom 601.

But the additional cost is justified, says Moll. “The functionality is much higher than Polycom’s top of the line phone,” he says, “and it [the SPA962] has a nicer user interface and a nicer ‘look and feel.’”

Linksys is initially targeting the SPA962 at small-to-medium sized businesses with high call volumes – for example large law or medical offices. However, its use is certainly not limited to those environments.

“It’s a phone can span from SOHO all the way up to enterprises,” says Moll. For budget-conscious operations, the SPA942 remains an economical choice, he adds.

The phone can be used with any SIP-based IP-PBX or hosted service. Deals with service providers are currently in the works and will probably start rolling out early next year.

Still not convinced you need the SPA962? Consider this: the pretty picture on the screen will at least improve the feng shui of your office.

The BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP of propane forklifts aggravated my mood for most of the day today, as hundreds of Teamsters and employees of many of the world’s most important IP Communications companies banged and whirred and taped and hammered together display booths and tradeshow paraphernalia on the cavernous exhibit floor of the Boston Convention Center.

Now, a little less than an hour from the VON Conference’s Opening Reception, the fork lifts are in clean-up mode at the far reaches of the hall’s rear corridors, and just the buzz of the occasional power screwdriver can be heard as I roam up and down the Exhibit floor’s 16 aisles, surveying the advance mood of perhaps the industry’s most important conference.

And the mood seems one of decided maturity. Almost everyone has been here and done this for the past several years running and the atmosphere strikes me as more “carny” than “rock show,” despite the new play being given to companies and concepts focused on video, as opposed to the conference’s former fealty to voice.

Tomorrow is another day, however, and until the big glass doors of the convention center’s mezzanine open to the paying attendees, it’s probably not fair to start pinning labels on the personality of this year’s show.

As for Martha, Eric, and I in the Voxilla booth, we’ve got our network up and running, our booth display erected, the CommunigatePro Mini Mac server registering a Polycom IP601 and a brand new Linksys SPA962. I’ve also got my cell phone hooked up to a PhoneLabs Dock n Talk and we are ready to talk the talk for the next three days.

I’ve already had a very interesting conversation with a service provider who claims to have the SIP WiFi puzzle solved and operational on some high quality hardware I’ll be able to identify after I get my test units, so maybe there will be some new and good news out of this conference after all…