Buy Magic Jack Now

From Computerworld.com

By Robert L. Mitchell

I’m trying to save money by shopping around my telephone, television and Internet service in two locations. Currently I pay $118 for those services at one location and $60 at the other. To my family that’s a lot of money. We’d like to cut back.

This week I’m looking at VoIP alternatives for my land line telephone service.

The Phone Company

Sticking with what works is the easiest option for most people. It may also be the least expensive if you don’t have or want broadband Internet service, which is needed to support competing voice over IP (VoIP) options. But if you already have broadband, you’ve got other options to think about. My plain old telephone services includes unlimited local dialing for about $23 per month, excluding taxes and fees. Packages with extra features and long distance calling are much more expensive, however, so I get my long distance from Pioneer Telephone.

One nice thing about Pioneer: It doesn’t charge a monthly base fee for the service if you pay electronically (otherwise it’s $.99 per month – much better than the $5 per month most telephone companies charge). I pay 2.7 cents per minute for long distance out of state. In-state calls are 7.5 cents per minute. Of course, we could also use calling cards for about 1 cent per minute, but they’re inconvenient. We have them but don’t always use them.

Magic Jack

Magic Jack is the cheapest VoIP alternative I looked at. At $20 per year it appears that users are getting something for almost nothing. So what’s the catch? There’s no free lunch.

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Magic Jack’s VoIP service gives users unlimited local and long distance calling in the U.S. for $20 per year. To get started you must buy special hardware: a small device, available online or from retailers such as Radio Shack, that attaches to a USB port on any computer. Total up front cost: $40. You then plug a single telephone into the device. Once you’ve signed up for service, Magic Jack assigns you a telephone number and activates your account. From there you supposedly just plug the device in to get dial tone.

Magic Jack offers a few basic features, including call waiting, voice mail online, caller ID and three-way calling. It also offers free directory assistance – something other services charge for to the tune of $1 or more per call.

The device has the advantage of portability. You can bring your phone anywhere where there’s a computer with broadband connectivity and make and receive calls. On the downside, your phone is tethered to your computer, which must be on at all times. And if you have power saving standby or sleep mode configured you’ll have to disable them to receive incoming calls. That’s a hidden cost. Not using power saving mode increases your computer’s electricity consumption to the tune of $14 to $45 per year.

With other services, such as Vonage or Comcast’s Digital Voice, you get a box that can power all of the phones in your house. You (or a technician if you use Comcast) disconnect the twisted pair feed coming in from the telephone company at the termination point (a plastic box mounted on the side of your home of office). Then you connect the VoIP-enabled device to any telephone wall jack to energize your telephone wiring. Voila! All of your existing telephone extensions will work. Magic Jack doesn’t do that. You can still have multiple phones, but with only one jack in the house you’ll need one of those cordless units with multiple hand sets.

Another consideration, as I learned after an ice storm last winter, is that VoIP products don’t work when there’s no electricity. While Comcast’s VoIP service includes a backup battery that keeps you going for a few hours, Magic Jack has no such backup.

While other services can “port” or transfer over your existing telephone number, Magic Jack cannot. And in some areas of the country, such as New Hampshire, the company can’t even assign the user a local telephone number.

Perhaps the biggest drawback is Magic Jack’s support, which is limited to online chat through its Web site. Ironically, Magic Jack, which offers telephone service to its customers, has no public phone numbers you can call. Is that level of support adequate for your telephone? Judging by the number of complaints about Magic Jack from frustrated customers, including this Boston Globe reporter, this is a problem.

Magic Jack is cheap, but I can’t rely on it as a land line replacement. As a product it seems to fall more into the toy or novelty category — and it’s marketed in that way. Its Web site is a bit cheesy, with gimmicky come-ons and no e-mail, business address or telephone numbers you can call. It could save me money as a supplemental service for long distance calling if I made a lot of long distance calls from my land line. But I don’t, and the service, tied to one phone on an always-on computer — isn’t exactly convenient.

From voip2u.org

I’ve had emails from visitors wanting to know how to use the Softphone Screen that appears when you install Magic Jack so I thought I would write an explanation of how it works.  The red numbers you see on the Screen below designate the different areas of the Softphone Screen that we are going to discuss, these numbers do not appear on the Softphone Screen on your computer.

1.  This is the area on the left of the Softphone where you will see rotating messages from Magic Jack about their services.  Any updates will also show here, such as when new area codes are added to the service.  If the area code that you want is not available when you first get your Magic Jack, you’re allowed to change your area code free once that area code becomes available.

2.  The center top of the Softphone Screen displays your Magic Jack phone number that has been assigned to you just under “Ready to call”.  There are also three buttons for Yahoo, AOL and Weather, which if clicked, will open up your browser to Yahoo.com, AOL.com and Weather.com.

3.  The Magic Jack Phonebook will store your contacts that you enter and also the calls that you have made or received with your Magic Jack.  By clicking on Contacts, a menu appears where you can edit or delete your contacts.  Clicking on calls displays your recent calls and Favorites will display the sites you have saved in Favorites in Internet Explorer.

4.  Buttons for Redial which calls the last number dialed; Voice Mail, which will dial your number and then prompt you for your password to access your Voice Mail.  When setting up your Voice Mail, use the password 1234, and then change it immediately to another 4-digit number.  The 411 button will open your web browser to this website:  free411.com which is a free telephone lookup directory.  Clicking on the Google button will open up your web browser to Google.com.

5.  When installing your Magic Jack, you will be prompted to enter your physical address for their 911 service.  You may add more than one address if you will be using your Magic Jack in different locations.  If you will be using the Magic Jack 911 service, be sure to have your correct physical location selected at all times. Also have a back-up way to call 911 in case your internet service goes down, as your Magic Jack phone will not work during these times.

6. Phone key pad on the Magic Jack SoftScreen.  You may use your phone to dial a number or the Softphone Screen can be used by clicking the buttons with your mouse.

7.  If using the Softphone Screen to dial a phone number, you click “Send” to call the number, and “End” to hang up when you are finished with your call.  The number you have dialed, whether using your telephone or the Softphone Screen will show in the white area.

8.  Change the size of the Softphone Screen by clicking on “Big” or “Small” in the upper right corner.  The Softphone Screen can be minimized by clicking on the button with the “-” located to the right of the “Big” or “Small” button.  The Menu button lets you access different features for your phone, such as “Do Not Disturb” which will send all calls directly to Voice Mail for you.

Now you know all about your Magic Jack Softphone Screen so you can use your new service to its greatest capacity. 

I’ve gotten a lot of questions from people saying that the phone they are using with Magic Jack does not ring when a call is coming in. The first thing you should check is the menu on your softphone screen to make sure that “Do Not Disturb” has not been enabled. To do this click on the Menu button on your softphone screen. A drop-down menu will then appear, with different options . Look to see if there is a check mark by the Do Not Disturb option. If there is, then click it again to make the check mark go away and then your phone should ring.

If you don’t have Do Not Disturb enabled and have tried the above, then try a different phone to see if perhaps the phone you were using won’t ring with Magic Jack. Any regular landline phone should work, you don’t need to buy a special phone. Also, make sure that your phone cord that is plugged into your MJ device is not more than six feet long.

Also, you do need to disconnect your magicJack once a month. All you have to do is unplug the device, reboot your computer and then plug the device back into the USB port on your computer. This keeps your magic jack working well. The other day I had a problem with my MJ turning off and on. It did this several times before I realized that I hadn’t done my “maintenance” by unplugging the device. I did that, and it’s been working perfectly ever since. I’m going to put a reminder for the first of every month to do this so I don’t have to stop and unplug and reboot when I need to make a phone call.

If none of the above suggestions work and your phone still does not ring when you have incoming calls, then talk to a customer care person at the Magic Jack website:

http://www.magicjack.com/9/customercare.asp

By Charlene Collins

From Associatedcontent.com

Recently I did an interview with my friend, Edith. She and her husband got the Magic Jack phone and they are very happy with it. On her recommendations I got the Magic Jack for myself; well, actually it was a gift from my son-in-law. He bought two Magic Jacks; one for my computer and one for his own.

The day we got the Magic Jack we were thrilled and excited to get them installed. We picked out the area codes we wanted and Magic Jack gave us our numbers. In our house I have an Atlanta number, while my son-in-law and daughter have an Athens number, both have different area codes, which I thought was kind of fun.

After the installation (plugging the unit into a USB port and uploading it to the company) we couldn’t make a call. Sean, my son-in-law, tried and tried to get our phones to make a connection and they wouldn’t. I knew there had to be something minor wrong, because my friend loves her Magic Jack phone. Sean talked to a representative through the chat line provided by Magic Jack, and she looked inside our computer through remote access and said that our Internet provider did not support Magic Jack.

I thought all would be lost, but not so! The technicians went inside our router and re-wrote something in there that allowed for us to use the Magic Jack phone. Now I am happy as a clam and I’ve made calls to friends all over the United States. The calls are free within the United States and Canada, and there is a nominal charge to call overseas.

I have a friend in Germany that I would love to talk to, so I plan to buy some minutes for that purpose. You just purchase a package of however many minutes you want to pay for and then you can call England, Germany, India and anywhere else in the world for just a few cents a minute.

In a way, the Magic Jack phone behaves something like a cell phone. It’s an Internet phone, so the connection may not be perfect all the time, like it is with a landline phone. I called my brother twice today. The first time he said he couldn’t hear me well. He said the call was full of static and my voice sounded far away. I hung up and called right back and the connection on his end was clear as a bell. On the first call I could hear my brother, Ralph, clearly, but he couldn’t hear me so well, but when I hung up both sides of the connection were clear without any interference.

I’ve called my friend in Jefferson, GA, which is just about 30 miles from here, the call sometimes breaks up like a cell phone does. The connection has also dropped once during our conversation, just like a cell phone will do sometimes. I called her right back though and we talked for a long time and both sides of the connection were clear.

I really do love this phone, even though there might be a few bugs in it. What can you complain about for free? The first year is free service, and the next year is $19.99. I like the way the phone system operates. When you pick up the phone to dial a page comes up on the monitor with a dial pad that you can dial with your mouse. You can dial from your list by just clicking on it and click send, or you can just dial your phone. You can also use a headset with it, instead of using a telephone. I tried that, but couldn’t get it to work. I might have the wrong kind of headset for it. My headset is designed for talking back and forth through a chat like on Yahoo, so that might have been the wrong kind of headset; I just don’t know about why I couldn’t get the headphones/mic to work.

It was easy to set up my voice mail. I just had to dial my number, then press * 1234 and follow the prompts to set up my voicemail. The downside of the Magic Jack is that when the computer is off your phone won’t work. Likewise, if you have a power outage your phone won’t work. The plan was to cut off our landline phone and just keep the Internet through our phone company, but I think we are going to keep it for awhile for backup, in case there is a power outage and if the cell towers aren’t working.

One thing I do like about the Magic Jack phone system is that I have my own number. I can call anywhere I want to for no charge. I share minutes with my family on my cell phone, so I am limited on how much I can use the cell phone, so my Magic Jack phone is perfect fit into my life.

I do think the Magic Jack is worth the price we paid for it. It’s just under $40. If you have a credit card they won’t bill you until your month trial is over; however, if you pay by debit card they will take the money out immediately. After Sean bought these two Magic Jacks online, he discovered they were for sale at Walmart for the same price, so if you don’t want to order over the phone, or online you can purchase one at Walmart and upload it into your computer.

In conclusion, I would have to say that outside of the few little bugs the system has, I really enjoy using the Magic Jack phone system. I have already saved enough money through long distance charges to pay for Magic Jack.

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Here is what their website says about faxing:

Q: Can I send and receive faxes using magicJack?

A: Sometimes.

We do not officially support using faxing with magicJack.

Please try the following steps to use magicJack with your fax (contact your fax vendor for details):

1. turn off error correction on your fax machine or program
2. set the fax machine or program to use the slowest speed available
3. increase the speed, checking at each speed that faxes work

From slickdeals.net

Yes, but that doesn’t mean it will work well, or well all the time.

The reason using a fax w/ the Internet is problematic is that a fax is analog and designed for a low latency network w/ dedicated circuits (POTS). In contrast, the Internet is digital and uses a *potentially* high latency packet switched network. And there’s the rub.

A fax machine was never designed to tolerate the latencies we see w/ the Internet. Once the fax communications is converted from analog to digital and routed over the Internet, the likelihood of “traffic delays” increases dramatically (at least compared to POTS), and thus it’s very possible one or the other fax machine will simply not tolerate that latency and drop out.

None of this is the fault of the VOIP provider, POTS, or the Internet. It’s simply an artifact of trying to make two completely different technologies interoperate. One REQUIRES low latency (fax), the other TOLERATES high latency (Internet). The extent to which Internet latency remains within the tolerance levels of the fax (which isn’t much) will determine your success rate. Thus, why it works sometimes, maybe much of the time (if you’re lucky), but not ALL the time.

That’s why VOIP providers are typically so vague about their support for fax — they don’t have much control over the situation. Same holds true for a modem, or anything that requires a conversion between analog and digital and does not tolerate the increased latencies inherent to the Internet. A voice call, in contrast, works much better because even if the sound quality is less than ideal or parts of a message are dropped/lost due to congestion, as humans, we can tolerate that latency to some degree (we’re not machines after all). Even so, if it gets too bad, even voice communications will suffer, to the point ppl will reject VOIP (in a sense, *we* similarly drop the connection too!). Early VOIP services often failed for this reason.

So in the end, faxing will ALWAYS be problematic. The only thing you can due is find ways to minimize the likelihood of latency, such as using a QoS router and/or ISP service. The latter gets into the issue of net-neutrality and whether one type of communication should have precedence over another, and perhaps at additional cost. But regardless, latency will always be an issue for faxing, and problematic w/ the Internet, because toleration for high latency is simply a fundamental construct of the Internet.