MagicJack works well for what it is designed to do. I use it sparingly, but my biggest usage is the ability to make long distance phone calls from out of the country back home. For example, I used it to call home from Korea and the quality was very good. My son uses it daily in his job (he telecommutes) and has experienced no problems (except when he used it from our house and about 6 different computers were using the router at the time). The drawback to MagicJack is it is not easy to use it as a "whole house" line like it is with Vonage or a similar service. For experimentation, I tried connecting mine to the phone jack instead of a phone line to se if the other phone jacks around the house could use it and it was unuseable. I seem to remember reading something where you could do something to enable that ability but am unsure what that was.
I have a landline and pay $26/month for all features included in VoIP services like Vonage and Lingo. I know Magic Jack cost something like $20/year but I have heard some pretty negligible things about them.
I think you need to disconnect the phone cord in the customer interface box first before plugging in the device on your phone line.
Would you guys just get something like the Time Warner package where they include phone, internet and TV? I already get TV and Internet from them.. DD
iirc, vonage is cheaper unless in the bundle package pricing. overall, they vonage voip and time warner voip are roughly the same, so price is the only distinguishing factor. there are features with vonage that I find better, such as the email update for voice mail and including a copy of the voice mail in the email.
Yeah, I seem to remember needing to disconnect something, but since I wasn't intending to use it as my land line, I never pursued it.
We do this, including the phone, from Comcast and we been satisfied. Just remember if the power goes out your phone goes down too, unlike a traditional land line.
I just canceled my land line this morning. I really never use it... it was always there 'just in case'.
Vonage is awesome. My parents are in Saudi Arabia, and with Vonage I just call their 713 number and no long distance charges. Cool how technology has changed the telecomunication world. I recall back when I used to call them from Switzerland to Saudi and paid an arm in a leg. I had like 600 phone bills.
^ WHAT?!?!?!? 600 phone bills? How did the company send those, via UPS?!?!? I know. I know. 600-dollar phone bill. If you guys have one of these VOIP phones and the interweb, cell phone towers and electricity are out, how would you talk on the phone? I don't see getting rid of the landline worth much in an emergency. I kept an old-school style touch-tone phone around the house and my landline because of that. During the last outage, I could call peeps when everyone else in the neighborhood couldn't.
Skype is great plus you can just add credits for calls and have your own number. Vtech make skype phones too.
NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! STAY AWAY!!! Vonage is good, MagicJack is crap! Trust me. It is just God awful!
Thanks, we just went with Time Warner, my regular phone bill for a landline was about $110 a month...this will increase my cable bill by $10 a month.....big savings. DD
