If you've ever started a business, you probably know that you need voicemail, a bunch of phone extensions, and a way of switching calls between all those phones. In other words, you're going to have to spend about $10,000 on a business phone system.

Or not.

We just opened the Daily News office for business with a phone system that costs $180. Really.

We're running an open-source software switchboard called asterisk on an old Apple eMac. Asterisk handles all of our voicemail and routing calls to extensions. We're using free software phones, and our calls are handled through a voice-over-internet provider that charges us about $60 a month for unlimited calls. 

The $180 went toward buying USB headsets for our reporters.

Granted, this thing took me all weekend to set up. But wow, it's crazy what you can do with computers these days.