Anybody have experience with Magic Jack?

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geodrake

geodrake

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I keep thinking Magic Jack would be a good deal for us.  I pay $55 per month for wire line phone service at home and forward calls to a cell phone when we are on the road.  Because of the forwarding, I can't put the wire line phone on vacation.

I am intrigued with the idea of throwing out the wire line service and going to Magic Jack.  When we leave home forward Magic Jack to the cell phone.  Why do the Magic Jack forward?????????????  ................. because we go to a lot of places where Sprint Wireless Broadband is pretty slow and therefor MJ might not work. 

As I review MJ on the internet I see some negative comments, including some that say it really isn't unlimited calling. 

What have you folks experienced?
 
I tried a Magic Jack a couple years ago and never could get it to work very well on my laptop using the wireless connection in our home.  It worked well on my desktop.  I thought it might have been a problem with my laptop processor speed, however I called Magic Jack and they said my hardware and connection speed should work well, so I sent it back and got a refund.

I have been using SKYPE and have had good luck with it.  It has an Iphone app which works well where ever I have a wireless connection.  It also works well with my laptop.  That's how I plan to communicate when in Canada this summer.
 
Why not kill the land line and only use the cell phone. Then there is only one number to reach you with and it is always in your pocket.
 
seilerbird said:
Why not kill the land line and only use the cell phone. Then there is only one number to reach you with and it is always in your pocket.
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Tom: In the stick house My office and shop are in the basement, where I hang out most of the time.  DW is always upstairs.  The ability to answer the phone in one location and then transfer to the other saves many trips up and down the stairs.  We use a Panasonic cordless telephone system that also provides intercom throughout. 

If I went Magic Jack I would connect it to the Panasonic when we are at home.
 
We've held onto our landline so we can check it from time to time for messages time to time when on the road.  We've not fulltimers and we still have a considerable amont of business that uses that number for a contact.  Over time, we plan to dump it.  The only time we expect to use SKYPE is when we're not in the USA.
 
We bought Magic Jack.  It all depends on your high speed connection.  If you're lucky and have a good, fast one, then it works fine.  But if you don't, then it keeps cutting out, annoying.  But as we don't usually make long distance calls when we're away, I thought that if we really had to then it was cheaper than paying roaming charges on my CDN cell phone.  I have hooked it up at home to see how it does and as I have an excellent high speed at home, it works like a charm. 
 
What you really need is a service like Vonage, which deliver excellent phone service over a high speed internet connection without the computer being involved at all.  For around $25/month you can have 300 minutes of anywhere calling and you control when & how it forwards and just about every other aspect of the phone service. Heck, you could even take the Vonage router with you if you were going to a place that had high speed internet. Just plug it into the LAN at your destination and your phone rings there instead of at home. We used our Vonage router all one summer at a campground 3000 miles from our home base. Connected it via wifi to the campground internet and we had home phone service right on the spot.
 
For around $25/month you can have 300 minutes
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Gary,

I use Vonage as well...for $25 you get unlimited calling to 60 Countries on the World plan.  The limited time plan is 500 minutes for about $18.

I have a home base phone number as well as a virtual phone number for our summer residence in the North.  That way people in both places can call us as a local call and it will ring wherever the Vonage device is plugged in.

With Magic Jack I believe you have to use your computer as the telephone device, whereas with Vonage we use the Vonage device plugged into the broadband router that supplies the phone(s)

 
RV Roamer said:
What you really need is a service like Vonage, which deliver excellent phone service over a high speed internet connection without the computer being involved at all.  For around $25/month you can have 300 minutes of anywhere calling and you control when & how it forwards and just about every other aspect of the phone service. Heck, you could even take the Vonage router with you if you were going to a place that had high speed internet. Just plug it into the LAN at your destination and your phone rings there instead of at home. We used our Vonage router all one summer at a campground 3000 miles from our home base. Connected it via wifi to the campground internet and we had home phone service right on the spot.
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Gary,
Do you use a  devise like the candle point router to connect the Vonage device to the wireless wifi at a campground?
Sounds like a solution for me also.
Jim
 
We had the Comcast phone installed a couple years ago. It's much better for a lot of reasons than the AT&T we had . They have unlimited calling both local & long distance. Also when we go to Fla. in the fall one phone call puts the phone, internet, & cable in the vacation mode. Our email still works with it like that & we still have the same phone number & email address when it's turned back on.  The phone also has a battery in it so it works when the power is out if you have at least 1 phone that doesn't need wall power. The only glitch I've found is the TV station directory channel takes a while to get it's brains back.
 
There is no wireless Vonage device - they all require a wired Ethernet LAN connection. To connect a Vonage unit to campground wifi, you need a device that can receive wifi and provide a LAN port for the Vonage device to plug into.  That device is called a wireless Ethernet bridge, though some wifi range extenders also have this function.

Here is an example of a Wireless brdige product:
http://reviews.cnet.com/wireless-access-points/linksys-wet610n-wireless-n/4505-3265_7-33549720.html?tag=also
 
Skype is much cheaper - and you can get an inbound and outgoing line. You will need to get a headset. If you have a computer webcam you can use skype to do video chat as well.
 
I have had MagicJack for several years and like it. I don't like to leave a computer running when I leave the stick house so I always take MJ with me. I have MJ forwarded to my cell phone for those times/areas where MJ doesn't work because either I don't have wifi or my laptop is off (like when driving). MJ doesn't have to be on and working for the MJ calls to be forwarded or for someone to leave a voicemail message. Yes, there are times when the wifi signal is weak and MJ doesn't work so well, but generally speaking we are happy with its performance.
 
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