Several Macintosh generations ago, there was a nifty little telephone application called Megaphone. It was intended principally for small businesses, but it offered enough gadgetry and data about calls to geeky home users like me to justify its $50 cost.

It was foremost an answering machine, but it logged all calls by using the phone company's caller ID function and allowed long-term, savable storage of important (or just sentimentally valuable) messages. It probably did other stuff too, but it was so long ago that I forget. I stopped using it - or rather, it stopped working - after a system upgrade, and I've missed it, slightly, ever since.

That's why I was excited to hear about Phone Valet, Parliant Corp.'s Macintosh version of its Tell a Phone software for Windows. Because I wasn't paying close enough attention at the time, I assumed it was an OS X version with the same functions and ordered one up. It turned out not to include the central item - the answering machine - but it adds other uses and is fairly neat anyway. Especially for home enthusiasts, it doesn't rise to "must-have" status, but how many gear items do?

In addition to using caller ID, it employs the Mac's capabilities for voice recognition and generation. That means when a call comes in, if you so choose, your computer will tell you who is calling, regardless of whether you can see your screen or caller ID panel.

This is especially nice when it's Aunt Millie, and there's no way you would have gotten up to answer the phone if you'd known that.

Voice recognition allows voice dialing just by using the ESC key. It took me a little while to learn how to speak so my iMac could understand me, but now I usually get the number I want on the first or second utterance. A dialog box appears, and if it's correct, I

need only lift the receiver for the machine to dial.

PhoneValet's call logs are needless data most of the time, but if you can remember the panic of the last time you unexpectedly needed the number of some guy who called you once, you can see how such a log would be valuable. In my Megaphone days, I recall surprise that what I'd considered a little toy had actually justified itself.

Because PhoneValet integrates with my Apple address book, it can identify callers as I know them, rather than as they're listed with the phone company. Last Sunday morning, I was impressed that the basic caller ID function told me it was someone I'd never heard of, but my computer told me it was my real estate agent calling from home, where the listing is in her husband's name.

Among the PhoneValet functions I didn't use is its ability to send e-mail upon receiving phone messages - useful if you're at work, waiting for an important call to your home - though it doesn't let you decide which calls warrant notification. Not to be undersold is its stability and ease of use. It was plug-and-play all the way, without software conflicts or other glitches.

Kevin Ford, Parliant's CEO, said the software is beefy, able to "store call logs and personal preferences in a multiuser relational database," whatever that is. He said he's been surprised by feedback that consumers would want to use expensive computing devices for a few-dollar function like answering the phone, but the company will likely add this anyway. In the meantime, the $130 price tag is more justifiable for small businesses that need to apportion time spent among their clients than for home users, but the device is fairly cool already, and shows potential for more.