NEC purchased Nitsuko...all true.
NEC is little more powerfull with a great look to it...easy to see lit buttons and nice looking sets.
NEC takes up very little space on the wall where Norstar takes up too much.
Voice mail is much more powerfull and little harder to program however if you have two companies sharing the vmail then you have to split up the ports where Norstar has tables allowing the ports to be shared.
Auto Call ID is limited to 15 sets with only a log of 10 calls allowed where Norstar has no limit on the latest software with a much larger pool for logging.
You can hot swap the cards on the NEC wich is rather nice.
NEC does not have simulated ringing on a transfer like Nortar does so you must have an on hold device installed.
NEC has only three paging zones and you need to purchase a card to allow paging and aux ringing where Norstar has 9 zones? and has all that built in to the KSU.
As for the S.I.E. keys...nice feature but they take up ports from the KSU.
Programming takes much longer then Norstar when programming from a set however programming with S.A.T. on a laptop is much easier and S.A.T. btw is better to work with then NRU.
NEC is cheaper and in fact they have been offering a discount by buying your old Norstar equipment.
The Elite 48 and the 192 are both to be discontinued and replaced by one similiar to the 192 very soon.
One thing that realy bothers me is that NEC uses access codes via intercom rather then having all of them under the feature key like Norstar.
User manuals for NEC are just downright pathetic so most of us phone companies have made are own easy to understand manuals.
From the customers view:
NEC: Brighter, better looking and more powerfull.
Norstar: Hard to see, lots of power and more user friendly.
From the techs view with programming:
Norstar: I'm done!
NEC: Where's my shotgun so I can blast this NEC off the wall? and for the PBX? where's my hand gun....so I can kill myself.
Bottom line is if you are an average compny who just wants a phone on the desk then they will both do the job for you but if there are issues you have then best take them up with sales agent from a company who sells both systems.
For those of you who missed my post..we also have an NEC forum now for both Key and PBX but the forum is not well known yet:
forum937