I bought OVO Lab phLink for the Macintosh a year ago thinking this software would be a fun, useful PBX voice mail system. We had an eMac lying around and the product had four or five mice rating — so it HAD to be good, right?

(buzzer sound here) WRONG ANSWER!

The product truly truly SUCKS. I shelled out $150 for each USB port, one for each line and I set this up in a matter of minutes. Installation was a real breeze. But big problem was getting the damned thing to work.

I bought the 4.01 upgrades (more money) and updated the OS to 10.5. I shelled out almost $500 and every time I called to test the system. click click click click was noise on the recordings.

I go the the Mac and listen to the MP3 files and heard no noise.

I called Qwest — our phone company to come out two times and check line noise, move the DSL from one circuit to another. I get them on their 2nd trip out here to create a POTS line (Plain Old Telephone System) and that didn’t work either.

With Qwest adding another $173.19 to my headache, I’m now up to $673.19 total and nothing worked. I emailed these guys in Italy. I even sent them a letter and put a lot of stamps on it. Nobody emails me back, nobody calls me.

I then start drinking a really fine Merlot from my favorite guy, Miguel Torres of Chile. He makes the best Merlots and best red wines out there. After my first bottle I begin to feel better and I start surfing my iPhone for a Macintosh voice mail software. I find Parliant Phone Valet.

It was affordable and it allowed callers to save their voice mails, and it would auto email them to my email and allow my iPhone to check voice mails too. Wow. $200 something was a bargain. So I ordered it and three days later it arrived.

In 13.5 minutes I had it running. With five voice mails and a special after hours CLOSED voice mail. So super easy and I needed NO manual and NO tech support.

PhLINK sucks and so does OVO Lab. Parliant’s Phone Valet is what you want.