magicJack (phone device)

Just curious- I have no financial interest in this.....

This seems like such a 'natural' for those of us who travel. It's a tad larger than the standard Zippo lighter. Plug it into any convenient USB port, plug the modular plug from any phone into the magicJack(.com), and voila! assuming you have a broadband connection, all your calls local- long distance- even international, are free! Well, $20 for the device and $20 a year for the service, including an incoming phone number with voice mail from the area code of your choice.

Anyhoo, does anyone besides me have one? Does it seem to work as advertised? I haven't made a lot of calls from mine, but on those I have made the party on the other end has said it sounded about like a cell phone. Anyone else's experience? I guess I'd like to find it's limits- like how 'slow' a connection will accommodate it and keep working.

We will be traveling next week for a while, and while we will have portable phones with us, I will try the magicJack. I'm hoping it will work from Europe/ Mexico/ Asia for staying in contact with the office instead of phone cards or high per-minute charges from the cell phone company. Would that all the clients could get along without supervision for a couple of weeks but not all of them can.

Anyway, Happy Travels to all!

Jim Ricks

I never heard of it but it looks pretty cool. Keep us posted.

This was posted at another place re this, in the main by photosmike (Mike-Go Gators) who is likely here also.

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sommeone100 wrote:Mike,

That Magicjack looks like it would be suitable for a lot of people.

Details were a little hard to find. http://help.magicjack.com/SupportFaq/Browse.aspx was helpful.

========================

Mark,

I bought a MagicJack out of curiosity and to test. The voice quality has been very good and almost no downtime. I use it on an iMac with no configuration problems. I plan to take it on our next long trip to Arizona. It is cheap and includes long Distance in the US.

The issues for me are:
- Limited number availability. My current MagicJack number is in an area code in TN. I have a Grand Central local number I forward to the TN number.
- Friends, relatives and neighbors don't recognize the number and will not answer, making testing difficult.
- Don't know know about the stability of MagicJack as a company/service
- Will only work when computer (PC or Mac) is on and connected to broadband.

A couple of our kids just bought a Magic Jack, and they're still checking it out. The few times they used it to call me weren't terribly impressive. Twice the connection sounded like a cell connection that was just about out of range, and once, I could just hear a chattering noise, and couldn't recognize one word. They had just gotten it, so we're waiting for the next review.
We'd thought it would be great for our fax machine, but changing the number (a business phone) would not be advantageous.
I'm anxious to read more reports on the service.

Generally speaking...never trust any product with the words "Magic", "Miracle" or "Wonder" in the name.

UWSurfer said:

Generally speaking...never trust any product with the words "Magic", "Miracle" or "Wonder" in the name.

Click to expand...

does that apply to Disney cruise ships?

UWSurfer said:

Generally speaking...never trust any product with the words "Magic", "Miracle" or "Wonder" in the name.

Click to expand...

Gosh, you might be missing a good thing. I live in 'Magic' Valley, put 'Miracle' Fuel Line Magnets in the cars and 'Wonder' why I'm broke.

Jim Ricks

I have one,but I haven't used it much yet. I've tried it on a few computers. It works well on a computer with a wired Internet connection. The quality is poor on a computer with a slow or error-prone one.

And it only works on Windows XP forward; I got a very interest Blue Screen of Death on Win2k. To use it for incoming calls, you have to leave your computer on, so it's not practical for that unless you are running a low-energy home server. (I am, but it's the Win2k machine.)

Not much risk ...

I used it a little more the past couple days. Just in my laptop from home, and no one knew it was VOIP unless I told them. One lengthy call was to a DS who is a paid techie and we did run it through it's paces. He said he was getting one to put on his server with cordless phones throughout the house. Another person said they'd get one for a dedicated fax number.

We will try it on public wi-fi networks next week in our travels and report back.

Now,if it would just work on my eeepc/Linux. I don't have the nerve to plug it in.

Jim Ricks

Please let us know if it works well for faxes, both incoming and outgoing. That'd be a great application.

One guy at work has one and can't fax with it.



___________________
WorldMark Owners' Community - - www.wmowners.com

Hi, I ordered one this week, it will be $20.00 per year all Canada and US included. We will use it mainly to call out as a second line/phone number to enhance our Vonage service, which we are happy with and to take it to PV for two months as it's so small and handy and will fit into my laptop bag with no problems. You get an American area code and number, no Canadian area codes right now, but will come I am sure. In the meantime a US area code is fine. My friend is in Ajijic for 6 months so she will be using it I am sure to call family in Canada. Vonage, for us in BC Canada, charges 7c a minute to call Germany and London where our family live and for us to call PV Mex, its 11c a minute and MJ is 2c a minute so I will save for sure, but that's all I know about it at this time. It sounds good but there will be pros and cons I am sure, but I feel positive it will work and save us money in long distance calls:whoopie: Paula BC

Update (sort of)

We took the Magic Jack to Europe a couple weeks ago. DW carried a WinXP laptop for the MJ, and I had my ASUS Eeepc (linux) with Skype built-in. DW's battery couldn't hold charge long enough to be useful, and the only place we found with (free) wi-fi had no power available. Where her USB ports are, the MJ blocked the power and other USB port. OTOH I was able to Skype for 4 hours with the mini on a charge. For us, the travel score was MJ- 0, Skype- 1. We do use the MJ some at home, but with a good size bucket of cell minutes, the MJ is no real improvement. I suppose if one has a Windows PC that's on all the time the MJ could work as an inexpensive extra line with voice mail and a number that can be based anywhere in USA.

Jim Ricks

I returned one

I ordered one and promptly returned it. I tried it on my laptop at home and had hoped to cancel a Lingo subscription (which I like). When it worked, I liked it. But, it simply wasn't reliable.

Passepartout said:

Just curious- I have no financial interest in this.....

This seems like such a 'natural' for those of us who travel. It's a tad larger than the standard Zippo lighter. Plug it into any convenient USB port, plug the modular plug from any phone into the magicJack(.com), and voila! assuming you have a broadband connection, all your calls local- long distance- even international, are free! Well, $20 for the device and $20 a year for the service, including an incoming phone number with voice mail from the area code of your choice.

Anyhoo, does anyone besides me have one? Does it seem to work as advertised? I haven't made a lot of calls from mine, but on those I have made the party on the other end has said it sounded about like a cell phone. Anyone else's experience? I guess I'd like to find it's limits- like how 'slow' a connection will accommodate it and keep working.

We will be traveling next week for a while, and while we will have portable phones with us, I will try the magicJack. I'm hoping it will work from Europe/ Mexico/ Asia for staying in contact with the office instead of phone cards or high per-minute charges from the cell phone company. Would that all the clients could get along without supervision for a couple of weeks but not all of them can.

Anyway, Happy Travels to all!

Jim Ricks

Click to expand...

I have one of the magic jacks and it performs as advertised with some minor exceptions. Some connections sound like you are in a tunnel. Some connections have some hesitation in the speech (like with a cell in a weak area), some times the weaker call is on the receiving side and sometime on the sending side. Some calls are perfect. For the cost of the initial investment it is a deal in my mind.

Passepartout said:

We took the Magic Jack to Europe a couple weeks ago. DW carried a WinXP laptop for the MJ, and I had my ASUS Eeepc (linux) with Skype built-in. DW's battery couldn't hold charge long enough to be useful, and the only place we found with (free) wi-fi had no power available. Where her USB ports are, the MJ blocked the power and other USB port. OTOH I was able to Skype for 4 hours with the mini on a charge. For us, the travel score was MJ- 0, Skype- 1. We do use the MJ some at home, but with a good size bucket of cell minutes, the MJ is no real improvement. I suppose if one has a Windows PC that's on all the time the MJ could work as an inexpensive extra line with voice mail and a number that can be based anywhere in USA.

Jim Ricks

Click to expand...

My MJ came with a short usb extension cable which did not block any of the ports.

Magicjack telelphone deivce

Hi there, here is my review of the MJ. We received ours two weeks ago and it's performing wonderfully. I have made calls to London, Germany and Guadalajara (Ajijic). The clarity is excellent. We live in Vancouver so use Vonage basic $20.00 pm for 500 minutes, which gives us all of Canada and the US. We now have Magicjack which is $20.00 PER YEAR for our LD calls to Europe specifically for us UK and Germany for 2c a minute, Vonage is 7c a min for us to those countries. I think as we travel so much it is a no brainer, small and compact, purse size and fits in my laptop case with no problems, I do carry a small cordless phone in luggage to use at our timeshare unit. I hope this small review has been of assistance to all who are wondering about it, we are happy with the cost savings:

My MJ performs flawlessly 90% of time. Only on occasion does it act like a cell phone and distort the transmission on one side or the other, but no worst than a cell phone.

I've had one for about 2 months

Mine works fine on my home laptop with wireless in-house network.

On my desktop computer at work, it used to be pretty bad more than half the time. My callees said I sounded fine, but they were very broken up. I went to the MJ website and found some FAQs, one mentioning my problem. They had several suggestions: try a different USB port; if you are using the little USP extender, try not using it; finally, go into the techie world and tell the computer to give priority to background processes.

Their step-by-step for doing that was for Vista, so I had to poke around to find it on XP. After following all of those suggestions, the performance was enormously improved. MJ also downloaded new firmware (on their own, not by my request), and that seemed to help too.

Now my callee might be broken some, but I understand them. It's just a little annoying.

I'm happy to have it and look forward to taking it on trips. With my wireless laptop, my MJ and a small lightweight phone, I expect to make calls without depending on the hotel or resort to charge me too much.

Long term: I wonder how they can pay for the little product, the network and the commercials. They promise some day to send ads to my screen, maybe targeted to my calling pattern statistics, but nothing like that yet.

I don't give out my MJ number because I don't leave the computer turned on at home. At work, it's on all day, but I never ask anybody to call me. Somebody might take note of the number on their caller ID and try to call me back. That won't ring my phone because I have it forwarding to one number or another -- I'll let you guess why because MJ might not want me to do that, so shhhh. :ignore:

$40 for the first year is worth testing, and so far so good.

Lee

5 Months for us!

We've had ours for 5 months - it worked well enough, clarity was good. The thing that I didn't like was that it keep poping up on my computer - it drove me crazy! Plus you have to leave your computer on all the time.

So as an only phone, I think not - but for traveling it seems like it would be great. And for $20.00 a year you can't go wrong (after the first year). I just would not sign up for the 5 year plan - might not be around!

Marsha

UWSurfer said:

Generally speaking...never trust any product with the words "Magic", "Miracle" or "Wonder" in the name.

Click to expand...

You are probably right. BUT, DH just watched a Magic Jack infomercial, and convinced me to go the website and sign up.

I'm kind of skeptical.....but there were enough good reviews here to give it a try. Right now we are paying MCI too much for long distance service, so if it works for us, we'll be happy.

We will post back with an update.

MagicJack update

We finally got around to plugging in the MagicJack and trying it, and the voice quality was excellent.

AT FIRST, it was awful (lots of static, kind of a thunk-thunk-thunk background noise), but we were using it with a cordless phone. Then we tried a corded phone (yup, they do still exist) and it was great. Looks like this will save us a chunk of money, as now we will discontinue our long distance service. It'll be somewhat of a hassle to be tethered to the computer with the corded phone...but we'll keep trying alternatives.

We were able to choose our area code and a local exchange, so we did not end up with a number from somewhere else.

It looks like you have to keep the application running. When we quit out of the program and then restarted the program, we had to plug/unplug the jack to get it to work again.

We may be able to figure out the kinks - but at the moment we are paying far more than $40/year to MCI for long distance, so this'll be great. I assume we'll keep our regular land-line for local calls and so people can call in.

PS - here's how we have it connected and it works great:

cable - cable modem - Apple Airport - wireless connection to iMac - USB cable to Magicjack - phone wire to corded phone

(corded phone instead of a wireless one, because the wireless phone had interference from something, possibly from our other wireless phones on our landline #)

bueno is free

Try http://www.bueno.com/ it is free in US and Canada. It will install a dialer on your computer and when the call volume is high it will not work. Used it a few times and the call quality is decent.

Update My Earlier Post

I learned from my boss that the reason that MJ calls at work were so "breaky" was because our network is very busy. It works at home on my wirelessly connected laptop.

They have downloaded new software every other month or so, and the call quality has only improved. Well, except this morning I called a friend in Oregon and she "stuttered" a bit. That's when the service keeps repeating a snippet of sound for a few seconds. I was a little annoyed, but then it stopped.

I am going to cancel a Packet 8 VoIP account, even though it provides extremely good service, just to save money during these times. Next I may cancel my landline too and depend on MJ and my cell. That step would take courage on my part.

I agree with not prepaying for five years, even though it's a tempting price, because they may not be around. I hope they are, though.

Lee

Lee B said:

Next I may cancel my landline too and depend on MJ and my cell. That step would take courage on my part.

Click to expand...

Same here!