Buy Magic Jack Now

I just saved $320 by cancelling an extra phone line and signing up with magicJack. It works as advertised; I like it; and it’s a keeper. I also have tips to make magicJack better, and if you’re intrigued, hack into it. (Fair warning: My magicJack review is long, way more than I usually allocate for one newsletter.)

Making the Switch to magicJack

I used to have three phone lines, and for years I needed all of them. But with almost all of my communication through e-mail, I decided to dump one and replace it with a magicJack. And save myself about $320 a year.

You plug the magicJack into a free USB port, then plug your phone line into the gizmo. Now you can make free calls with VoIP — they’re routed through the Internet. (The magicJack comes with a 6-inch USB extension cable in case it interferes with other devices plugged into your USB ports.)

Plug one end into a USB port and connect the other end to your standard phone.

 

Hey, I’m Connected

To see how easy it was to get started, I connected the magicJack to a USB port on my PC. (If you use a hub it has to be powered; if it’s not, or underpowered, the magicJack might not work.) Then I plugged a phone into the magicJack using a standard phone cable. Cordless phones also work; just plug in the base unit.

The computer recognized the magicJack like any Flash drive, then it took about 5 minutes to download software updates. I picked up the phone, heard a dial tone, dialed as I normally would, and made my first magicJack call. Cousin Judy in New York said I sounded unusually good, a backhanded compliment if I ever heard one. It took another few minutes to create a 911 location and set up voicemail.

You can call by dialing your phone or do it from your PC.

Once I saw that the magicJack worked, I connected it to my ancient Nortel Venture three-line phone, the one that I rigged up to use a Plantronics wireless headset. If you prefer, you can use your PC’s speakers and a microphone, or a headset, just as you would with Skype.

What’s the magicJack Catch?

There really isn’t any. There are a few inconveniences, and one not-so-minor hassle, and I’ll get to them. But first I want to cover the basics.

One thing to consider is that you need broadband: magicJack requires speeds of at least 100KB. And if you have DSL service, magicJack will work just fine, but don’t call the phone company to shut off your regular phone line as it’s needed for the DSL connection

The magicJack service costs $40 for the first year, which includes the USB dongle. The cost for subsequent service is $20 per year, but chances are good the fee will increase. So the company pushes a 5-year service plan for $60. You get unlimited calling to anywhere in the United States, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Canada. International calls are 2 cents a minute.

If you make a magicJack call to a friend’s magicJack number — anywhere in the world — the call’s free. Calling the United States or Canada from another country with your magicJack is also free. Yep, that’s right: You can carry the magicJack while you’re traveling, connect it to your notebook, and all your calls are free.

You can call as much as you’d like, but magicJack’s Terms of Service obliquely says, “If magicJack sees excessive use, including but not limited to, a customer whose usage is twenty (20) times more than the average magicJack’s customers usage” they’ll cut off service and won’t give you a refund. Swell.

All your 411 calls are free, but you need to listen to a 20-second commercial first. I prefer Google’s free Goog-411 (800-466-4411).

Other features? You have access to 3-way calling and call forwarding. What’s missing is caller ID blocking.

Of course you’re worried about voice quality, and so was I. Most of the time it ranges from very good to great. I talked with my TechBite partner, Mike, in Denver, for about 2 hours and it was a perfect connection. Yet when I tried magicJack’s 411, and then checked voicemail, the connection cut in and out; I also experienced a disconnect when I called my mother (really, Mom, I didn’t hang up!). I got better quality if I stuck the magicJack in a port on my PC instead of using the USB hub.

Is MagicJack For You?

Maybe.

Some forums say that magicJack is good only to use as a second phone line, maybe for a teenager, or just for saving money on long-distance calls. I agree; I wouldn’t advise you to drop your only landline or cell phone for magicJack for a couple of reasons.

First, I wouldn’t depend on the magicJack for emergency 911 calls. Say there’s an emergency and you lose power. Access to the Internet is gone, and magicJack is useless.

Second, you have to keep the PC on. When your PC isn’t running, incoming calls to the magicJack phone number are routed to voicemail. (Here’s a neat option: If someone leaves a voicemail, magicJack sends you an e-mail with a sound file of the message.)

I thought I’d get smart and try a work-around. I attached the magicJack to the USB port of my server, an always-on Seagate Network Attached Storage device. The magicJack had a hearty laugh and refused to be recognized. The designer of the magicJack said it couldn’t be done.

BTW, magicJack includes a local number as part of the service; most metropolitan areas are covered, but you might not be in one of those spots.

Try magicJack for 30 days. If you don’t like it, all you pay for is shipping. The trial starts when you order the device, and you have to get it back to them within the 30 days. (I know you have more concerns, you always do. So read the FAQ for all your picayune questions.)

Two Not-So-Magic Quibbles

One thing I didn’t like: I had to click the Minimize icon to get the magicJack program into the system tray. I’d prefer it automatically minimize when magicJack loads. I haven’t been able to find a way to do it, and no, I don’t want to use an extra software tool to do it. The designer said, “… anything is possible, but this is not on the drawing board; the magicJack is built for the people who need to see it loading.” Whatever.

The company includes an Outlook add-in that lets you dial directly from Outlook’s contacts. That’s handy, but I’d also like a way to import directly into magicJack’s contacts from an Excel or CVS file.

You’ll also have to remember to add an area code no matter where you’re calling, even if it’s a local call.

MagicJack Tricks and Hacks

There are lots of ways you can play with the magicJack. Here are a few:

• I don’t need to see magicJack’s splash screen, so I disabled it.
• If you want run the magicJack from your hard drive rather than the USB dongle, here’s the trick. It doesn’t seem like it’s worth the bother, though, because you still need the dongle in order to connect to a phone line.
• When I connect an external USB drive, I expect it to be drive letter “G.” Without asking, magicJack grabs the first two available drive letters — “G” and “H” — for its USB dongle. It’s easy to fix that.
• You can run magicJack as a Service, spoof its caller ID, reveal more magicJack features by changing the skin, and maybe get your Chevy to get more miles per gallon. It’s all in the magicJack hack site. The Unofficial magicJack forum has more ordinary fixes, hacks, and advice.
• If you have a PBX system, and a nimble mind, you might be able to hack the magicJack to act like a trunk in any Asterisk-based IP PBX. If that’s not Greek, get the details at VoIP Insider and INTJ Geek.

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.

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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