Plus, you'll need between 30MB to 100MB of free space on your hard drive. And of course, you'll also need to leave the computer on in order to use the voice messaging, voice command and caller I.D. functions. To be sure, if you thumb through a product catalog from the local electronics retailer and you'll find countless 900MHz cordless phones selling at sharp discounts to the price charged by Microsoft. For that you have to pay extra. As it showed with Bob, Microsoft periodically goes down the wrong path because it has a disproportionate perspective of what its software is really worth.
Customers have telephones which they use fairly simply and inexpensively.
What Microsoft is offering isn't so much a manufactured need as an unappreciated need. If users receive these features without getting whacked in their wallets, they may ultimately use them. But customers won't pay for what they don't know they need. The idea, of course, is to bind businesses and users in a Microsoft-centric web of products and services. Most people aren't that dumb.