My wife loves the Panasonic cordless phone/answering machine I got for her a while back. (She's home most of the time, so it's really *her* phone.) It has talking caller ID, a ringer that CAN be turned off entirely, in addition to having different volume settings, and it can block whatever numbers you tell it to. And I've set different ringtones on it for certain people that she is not always in the mood to talk to. We already have a bunch of solicitors blocked. She loves that Panasonic cordless. She calls it "Jeeves".