Magicjack

i use hamachi. sorry no help with magicjack.

 

Bump on the magicjack question; Any other users yet?

I have two pals that have them and they both say it works fine.

20 bucks for the devce and then 20 bucks per year.

 

I've had one for around a year now. I mostly use it when I travel and it works fine. I used it from my motel room every night this past week. I also got my daughter one. She uses it as a home phone and loves it. I just renewed for $59 for five years. The only drawback for some people is that you have to have your computer on for it to work. Most are reporting mixed results with faxing, but that's not what it's designed for.

 

It all depends on your application though. Personal - maybe, Business - no.

Pros
- Very cheap
- Decent for travel
- Decent for students

Cons
- Too many issues with dropped calls or calls that wouldn't go through/be received properly. Very inconsistent.
- You have to drag your laptop and a phone that you can plug in via a traditional phone jack wire. Could be worth the hassle if overseas or extended travel.
- Accessing voicemail can be a pain as it doesn't always connect.

I just found it too unreliable for contract work and returned it within a few days but I think it's a personal threshold of what you're willing to put up with. You do get what you pay for in this case.

 

Mine was actually delivered to me this morning!

For $40 for the first year and $30 every year after I can't go wrong(extra $10 for a cdn number) I plugged it into my usb drive and within 10 minutes I was up and running. So far it's been great and since I make a TON of long distance calls all over N.A this is perfect for me.

I have a cell phone thats my main number but since my laptop stays at home it's perfect for a home phone, I also work from hom 99% of the time so it's very convienent.


They give you 30 day's to try it before they bill you so it's worth giving it a chance.

Cheers

James Simpson

 

I use Ooma myself. It's more expensive - in the neighborhood of ~$200 - but it's lifetime. I haven't tried MagicJack - but I can say the quality of Ooma is landline quality since it requires that you have an upstream/downstream of 300K versus the other VoIP carrier that uses some type of compression down to 25K. It may not be as portable(not sure if you are looking for that), and the added advantage is that you do not need to have a computer on at all.

 

I'm sort of a VOIP freak. Picked up a Ooma and scout a couple of months ago and I must say, it works very well. I drives my wife crazy because I'm running around four different phone services at any given time.

 

I use MagicJack. It's awesome. I also use Google voice, give out that number to people, and redirect it to the magic jack number or to my cell phone, depending on time of day. If the computer is off, it goes into google's voicemail and I get that on my cell phone or I can pick it up via playing back the audio file through any web interface. Keeps the personal and business voicemails separate, and makes it easy for me to forward my business voicemails anywhere or do any other kind of processing/call handling I want.

Just awesome.