A friend of mine said his dad just got Magic Jack. Guess what? He is having the same problem with echo and unreliable calls as everyone else has.
It would be nice if the thing worked. I could give up my house phone if Magic Jack had a reliable answering service.
For the cheap price, missing an outgoing call is not bad, but I can't have missing incoming calls.
All this time I thought the answering service was web based, The MJ can break and you can still collect your incoming calls from the web...?
If you have a cell phone, just have Magic Jack forward to the cell phone so you don't miss important calls. You'll be using cell minutes, but you don't have to answer the call if Caller ID shows a non-important call.
The jury is still out on MJ at my house. I got one as a gift after my Skype would not work at a remote cabin because of "latency", which is a delay that is like talking to a schizophrenic.
So, we got the MJ, and tried it at the cabin. It does not get cell signals in the canyon where it is, but it does have a satellite hookup.
We tried it, and it worked, but have not spent enough time there to really get a line on if it works good, average, below average, or poorly.
If it works, for the price, it can't be beat. Some people who like to talk a lot swear by it. Skype, too, particularly for international travelers from obscure countries where phone service is a wire between two cow tails.
Steve
I don't know how it works, but I know you don't have to have your computer on to receive incoming messages.
It was supposed to record messages and send a wav file to your email, but I never could make out what the message was. It would have been a perfect solution for me, had it worked.
I have a computer I leave on 24/7, but that was another problem for some people.
Another catch I read about that I never tried was that faxing was a problem for some. I do use faxes, but I have been able to email most things that could be faxed.
That may be a good solution now that I have a better cell phone package.
Metspitzer wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
Same problem here. Plus they don't have a local area code available. Been that way for over 1 year. The only thing I can use it for is accessing my voicemail when I'm at work. (voicemail at a real phone).
Was using MJ for about a year then switched to Nettalk TK6000, it connects to the ethernet port on the router and comes with a power pack ao you don't have to have the PC on all the time but it can also be used with the usb port when traveling if you dont have access to ethernet. It has the same problems with area codes and it's awkward to get setup the web user interface is a little messy but the quality seems better.
MJ quality depends on your broadband connection and the state of your PC. If your PC is sluggish from a lot of background tasks and processes and you don't have at least 1.5 mbps DSL you can get anomalies in the quality and function of MJ.
I have vonage it it is pretty reliable. It has a devicethat connects directly to your ethernet so the computers don't matter. Seems to me for not much more mj could sell a device with an ethernet connection instead of a usb one. But they don't so far.
They don't because from what I understand their business model was supposed to be ad driven so the idea being you would need to watch an ad before you could use it. The only way to do that is to require you to use it with a computer. There isn't anything "magic" about magicjack. They use a modified enough to require their proprietary software version of SIP. Standard SIP is what other VoIP carriers use.
How do you "watch" an ad before using your phone? Doesn't seem practical. What would inbound callers get, a message saying please wait while the party you are trying to reach goes to his computer and watches an ad, haha.
For $19.95 a year, what do you expect?
How long will this company be in business? Will the service die when it fails to keep bringing in more buyers and they decide to shut down? How will they make money to keep providing the connections when the number of earlier buyers far exceeds the money coming in from new buyers?
I got my daughter and her friend each one for Xmas. Daughter's friend had to move away and this has been a great way for them to stay in contact and off of my phone.
Jimmie
Before you make a call. Thats the expensive part for the provider.
Metspitzer wrote the following:
I have a Magic Jack. I got it because my wife is on the house phone almost all morning with relatives and friends, and my cell phone does not work well in the basement where I have my office and computer. My main use is to call my bank, credit card companies, and other businesses for support or information.. I don't receive calls on it and no one knows my MJ number. So far, it works as well as a regular phone.
I hear in about 4 mo. MJ is supposed to come out with a unit that acts like a mini cell tower for the home allowing free calls to an from cell phones in the home for the same price.
That is one of the reasons I don't give up my home phone. I don't want to have to carry my cell phone around the house to answer the phone.
Metspitzer wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
Belt clip.
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