Skype Killer - Magic Jack - $20.00 a year phone service

[TechnoSaint]

I had this for the 30 days free that they had advertised at one point. I plugged it in, it did its installations and worked great! Unfortunately, my PC would randomly reboot without any reason or rhyme. When I unplugged it, no reboots. It worked on another PC of mine but it was an inconvenient spot for my phone . There's plenty of help on the Magic Jack Forums all over the place, and even some Magic Jack Hate Forums . I guess it's all about your own well informed decision to get one of these. They work, they're convenient if you travel a lot, and will give you another phone line, especially if you have kids that tie up the home phone or run up your wireless minutes. All in all, a good investment, and even if they don't last a long time (a la SunRocket) it's still a good deal, if you last over 2 months, you're already doing better than Vonage, and so on and so forth....

 

[VirtualLarry]

I signed up for their "platinum" plan (or whatever they called it). 5 years of service for $50 additional. That sounded worth it to me. It saves on cell minutes. I have naked DSL and I use this as my cheap landline.

 

[JeremiahASEC]

not available in my area fiddle sticks.

 

[SoulAssassin]

So I don't care about incoming calls, I just want something the woman can use for calling her mom long distance to keep minutes off the cell phone. She won't use anything complicated requiring an app on the PC. I'm thinking my options are magic jack for $20/yr or a skype subscription for $2.95/mo ($36/yr) plus the cost of a skype phone. Seems to me like magic jack is an easy winner...thoughts?

 

[CU]

Originally posted by: Spelvin
Theoretically if you disconnect the phone line coming into the house, you can back jack the Magic Jack into an existing phone jack and any phone plugged into any other phone jack would work. You would just be feeding the system from the MagicJack rather than the Telco line. I picked one of these up a week or so ago and have made probably 2 hours worth of calls with no issues. I setup a Pentium2 300Mhz machine with 128meg of ram and it works great.

Pretty impressive it worked with such a low end system. I really think I am going to try this out. What OS were you using?

 

[davidtb]

not interested until I get my area code!!

 

[episodic]

Originally posted by: SoulAssassin
So I don't care about incoming calls, I just want something the woman can use for calling her mom long distance to keep minutes off the cell phone. She won't use anything complicated requiring an app on the PC. I'm thinking my options are magic jack for $20/yr or a skype subscription for $2.95/mo ($36/yr) plus the cost of a skype phone. Seems to me like magic jack is an easy winner...thoughts?

Unless she talks a TON of minutes, you might be better just to go a la carte - and not pay for the subscription. A 10$ money card is like 2 cents per minute in the US or something close to that - don't quote me.

I love skype - has never let me down. I do pay the 2.95 fee and 4.00 a month to skype in. My skypein number is what I give to any registration, or any place I could care less if they ever contact me again. It is easy to reject the calls

 

[Spelvin]

CU: I am using XP Pro SP2 on the box. I do have a scheduled task that reboots the box nightly at 2 in the morning but I have not had any issues with this low a system running it.

 

[Lemodular]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: Gast
For those that don't know, use of this device requires the install of spyware and ad delivery system. I don't know how frequent the popups are or how invasive the spyware is, but due to the fact they really try to hide this info, I've avoided the product.

Non honest advertising FTL

Spyware? What spyware? I didn't notice any spyware installed along with the software.

Not sure how it all works (the ads) but here is the (old) boingboing article on it:

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/...icjacks-eula-says.html

 

[JackBurton]

Good info.

 

[PokerGuy]

Originally posted by: Gast
For those that don't know, use of this device requires the install of spyware and ad delivery system. I don't know how frequent the popups are or how invasive the spyware is, but due to the fact they really try to hide this info, I've avoided the product.

Non honest advertising FTL

Yep. Not to mention, if you do some quick googling, you'll find that their customer service is non-existant, they charge your card immediately when you order (even though they indicate you have a free 30-day trial and will not charge your card until the trial is over). Just go ahead and try to find a return address on their website for returning the item during the 'free' trial. They will stall and try to get you past the 30 days trial (the clock even starts ticking when you order, not when you get it or start using it).

Very shady, plus no customer service = stay away.

I know there are people who have had success with it, but I know if you have issues or if the thing simply doesn't work, you're going to be out $40 with no recourse. No thanks.

 

[IksokChoy]

Got it and installed 4 days ago. Seems to work fine, slight echo but tolerable. Only hassle is people have to dial area code to get in touch with you. I think its woth th $20 / yr. IMHO. Just disconnected phone from cable provider 2 months ago costing me $42/mo and all I got was survey calls, non profit sales calls and Lawyer collection calls for my dead Mother-In-Law 3 years past. On top of that I got stuck with an additional $70 early cancellation bill for falling 2 weeks short of a long distance service provider . So Far, it works for me

 

[LurkingInNC]

Originally posted by: IksokChoy
Got it and installed 4 days ago. Seems to work fine, slight echo but tolerable. Only hassle is people have to dial area code to get in touch with you. ...

Does that mean people calling you using landlines are hit with long distance fees since they have to dial the area code?

 

[IksokChoy]

Don't know for sure. I think that that's how Magicjack servers dial it ????

 

[zposter]

No, it means that even if they're in the same area code they have to dial the area code to call your magicJack number.

I just got one and was testing it out a couple days ago and it sure seems that I didn't have to use the area code to dial my magicJack number, but today I had to. However the configuration was such an immense hassle behind my hardware firewall I wouldn't swear to not having to use the area code due to all the other trouble I've been through.

Since I couldn't get through the firewall I ended up adding another leftover router and junker computer (ancient laptop) to host the magicJack. Now I'll see how much I like it.

 

[ericlp]

I use it for my alarm system to dial my cell number. Works good, I also use it to just dial people to save on minutes or obviously when I'm home to make calls to order a pizza or just call for store hours and crap that I wouldn't do on my cell phone.


So far the quality is decent. I've called my cell a number of times for a test and works every time. So hoping it doesn't puke on me in a real situation tho, it seems to be somewhat reliable I know the number and if it's dialed it's my alarm system so I'll know to come back and check up on the home not like I wanna talk to my alarm system or anything.

Anyway, So far So good. Had it for about a month now. I've had dropped calls and some people that I wouldn't normally give my phone number too like sales people have actually called and sometimes they can hear me but I can't hear them, so I hang and call back then everything seems fine.

So, for 20 bucks a year? Hell yeah, better then a stupid land line since I have a low powered laptop with XP running and it doesn't take up too much juice. Would be nice if they had linux drivers then I could just run this off of a planned router file server box.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: zposter
No, it means that even if they're in the same area code they have to dial the area code to call your magicJack number.

I don't know what part of the country that you are in, but in my neck of the woods, they instituted manditory 10-digit dialing a few years ago, due to all of the overlapping area codes.

 

[TechGeekDeluxe]

I have had Magic Jack for about 3 months now.

Pros: Clear reliable quality. Cheap.
Cons: Must have a PC on to use. PC will have pop-ups from the ads. [Unless extensive tweaking is used.]

I have a server I leave on 24/7 [a E3110 underclocked to 1.5GHZ with 8gb ram and a caching program that runs most everything from ram versus spinning up the drives.]
It works well. It cuts down on cell usage by the kids.

I paired it with the top of the line Panasonic wireless phone system with a base station and 4 handsets.

 

[Nitemare]

Will use it just so the satellite can call home and talk, beats paying Time Warner $55 a month for ESPN.

 

[Schmide]

When they advertise on TV, I know not to buy. Bye Bye...

 

[Jessica69]

Originally posted by: Schmide
When they advertise on TV, I know not to buy. Bye Bye...

Gee.....I guess that means you don't buy anything at all, do you?




I've had it for a few months......very clear, didn't charge my credit card until 32 days had passed, contrary to what some one else bleated.

There was NO malware, spyware, or anything else loaded.....just a very small footprint dialing program. And no popup ads have shown up either.....works better than Vonage, clear, faster.

 

[erwos]

Can this thing do faxes yet?

 

[Esquire]

I bought this about a month ago and use it for my company fax line it works great I paid for the five-year deal for $100 so hopefully they stay in business. I'm using it on my Mac Mini which I use as my file server it doesn't load any spyware so to speak. if he shows up as a mounted drive.

 

[MrMaster]

First, the guy who owns this magic company is uber rich. It isn't going anywhere.

2nd. Anyone want to explain to me why i should get this over skypeout? I need an 'unlimited' phone service very very soon.

 

[Q]

So if you use 1 jack, will it work on only 1 household phone?