$20 a year? My first reaction is that it's a scam. But if it's for real...

I think it's for real.

I don't know how the economics of their business works but the Jack certainly does function as advertised as long as they're in business.

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DP
$20 a year? My first reaction is that it's a scam. But if it's for real...

Plus whatever is costs for you to keep your PC on 24x7 for a year.

If you google, you will find opinions both ways. I studied it pretty heavily before I jumped from Vonage to Ooma. Magicjack is one of many similar options.

keep your PC on 24x7 for a year.

> Why doesn't everyone sign up for Magic Jack?

I've got Skype with a wireless handset and I'm fine with it.

When/if the MagicJack femtocell comes out, I'll reevaluate the situation.

My parents have it.

The sound quality sucks.
You have to keep/turn on your computer in order for the phone to work.

ooma is much better

You also cannot port your existing number to MJ. That "feature" has benn promised as coming soon for the last year.

Because the commercials look like the same kind they use to sell "The Clapper", and motorized wheelchairs.

I have one hooked up to my HTPC Mini, which is on all the time anyway doing something (bit torrent, transcoding video's, watching Hulu). It works great if you have decent bandwidth. My problem is that my bandwidth breaks down during certain times of the day, mainly afternoons, and then call quality really drops.

My brother has one also, and has great bandwidth, and he has no problems with his.

One thing that is really nice with MagicJack is you can take your phone number with you. It's a dongle that connects to the usb port, so I take it with me on the road and still have free calls when I hook up to friends wifi.

I never really considered it based on the production quality of the TV commercials. Looked just like any other weirdo as-seen-on-tv product that probably isn't going to work very well, but if it works for you then great.

It's great when I travel overseas. I've only have had trouble using it once. It was a hotel room that blocked all high bandwidth transmissions.

At home I don't use it because my wifi bandwidth isn't good enough. If the phone is connected to a computer that is directly connected to my cable modem, I get excellent reception.

An other irritating issue is that it requires me to dial 1+area code+number even when I'm dialing in the same area. They were supposed to fix this, but it hasn't worked for me.

Finally, the caller ID just provides numbers, not names.

Because I'm expecting Time Warner to block VOIP services that aren't their own. Why ? Because they are EVIL INCARNATE !!!!

Because my "high-speed" internet access is via satellite and none of these things work with it.

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What it is, man, a low-down and funky feelin'

can't port an existing number

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hotdogthemovie
I have one hooked up to my HTPC Mini, which is on all the time anyway doing something (bit torrent, transcoding video's, watching Hulu)...My problem is that my bandwidth breaks down during certain times of the day

Stop with the torrents then your ISP will...um..."fix" that for you.

umm... no... my bandwidth issues have nothing to do with torrents.

If I chose to pay more money, I would have plenty of bandwidth...

btw, I don't bit torrent movies or music. Mostly tv series episodes because my bandwidth throttling makes watching via Hulu painful at times...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/19/2010 01:27PM by hotdogthemovie.

I bought one and the sound quality sucks. I'm much happier with google voice.

With the TW cable and internet I have I asked one day how much it would cost to add
the their phone service and they said $8 more per month than I was paying, I said do
it. We were paying $48/mon for a land line through Windstream. Windstream suddenly
offered to drop my rate to like $22/mon. I asked why didn't it cost that to begin with
and told them, "you're too late I'm through with you".

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Grateful11