anyone using magic jack?

[sudoer541]

anyone using magic jack?
what are the advantages and disadvantages of magic jack?

[XubuRoxMySox]

My big brother went back to Windows from PCLinuxOS because of magicjack. That traitor! ;)

I found a cool alternative called Jajah (http://jajah.com) which uses your regular landline and/or cellular phone and lets Jajah users call each other for free.

You can go to the web site, enter your number and your friends number and click "call." Your phone rings. You pick it up and Jajah connects you to your friend. It's a local call at each end, and VOIP in between. In alot of cities you can even assign a local number to your friend's phone and make Jajah calls without a computer at all! Very cool.

With Skype and Jajah and all the other alternatives available, I just can't make myself believe that magicjack could be worth going back to Winblows for, but that's just me... Magicjack is not available officially for Linux, but I hear that many 'nixers have gotten it to work on Linux.

-Robin

[el_heffe]

My big brother went back to Windows from PCLinuxOS because of magicjack. That traitor! ;)



Sadly, I am inches away from doing the same. I need to get Magic Jack working, and I have tried VirtualBox(not open source) and VMWare Server. Neither works well enough with the damned thing to get to the point where software is installing. I have looked and looked and tried different solutions, but it just doesn't want to work. It depresses me to think I may have to go MCE to get this crap working.... :(

I have been contemplating Hackintosh.. but it doesn't support Hauppauge TV Cards.

[sudoer541]

I heard that magic jack will support Linux. Can anyone verify?

[sdowney717]

they keep saying this going on for couple years now and still nothing.

i had limited success in vmware. when it worked was clear voice but then it quit working and never could figure out why. virtualbox it works but voice is way too choppy. it just sucks too much power to run magic jack for a vm, why not just put together a windows box only for it.? but then that wastes electric power running all the time. until they come out with a linux driver it is not really worth it.

i use www.voipvoip.com and my bill is about 10 to 12 per month and get perfect voice calls. i brought my own voip device to use. if you go on forums, you do hear complaints about voice quality with magic jack. i also experinced a few voice quality issues, but less than 5% of the time when running vista (not vm'd)

http://www.voipvoip.com/byod/

i can also block individual callers etc...
you only pay for outgoing calls

[madhi19]

I heard that magic jack will support Linux. Can anyone verify?

They been saying that for years considering the cash I could save am tempted to just get a stripped bare minimum PC running XP in a closet just to run it. Or maybe an old laptop.

[sudoer541]

support (http://www.kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=3095583) for Linux (http://blog.laptopmag.com/magicjack-inventor-plans-linux-support-improved-customer-service-and-more) in 2009 (http://blog.laptopmag.com/magicjack-scoop-new-features-new-device-coming-in-2009-2010) and 2010

[sudoer541]

to make things easier. Linux support will be available in the first quarter of 2010!! OMG!!! this is Xiting!!!

any advantages and disadvantages of using magic jack?
is local Canadian 911 available? can I cancel my phone service without affecting my ADSL connection?
How much does the Magic jack cost? any FAQs I can refer to?

[Georgia boy]

Have you looked into Vonage? My father uses magic jack and likes it, but he uses Windows. I had thought about that but I don't want to use Windows and also it wouldn't really be that much use to me for calling to my wife's family in Korea. So that leaves Vonage for me to check into.

Tom

[el_heffe]

Have you looked into Vonage? My father uses magic jack and likes it, but he uses Windows. I had thought about that but I don't want to use Windows and also it wouldn't really be that much use to me for calling to my wife's family in Korea. So that leaves Vonage for me to check into.

Tom

I had thought about it, but the appeal of MJ is no monthly fees... I've got it running on my iMac right now, so hopefully I can manage with that, but I had hoped to have it running on the computer thats always on... *sigh*

[toupeiro]

... It's dependant on your OS?!

+1 Vonage. Happy customer for going on 4 years. Yes Magic Jack is cheaper, but I'd like to give it the coca-cola challenge. When you talk to people on it, does it sound as good as a land line? Because, Vonage does, and in some cases people say its even clearer.

[madhi19]

to make things easier. Linux support will be available in the first quarter of 2010!! OMG!!! this is Xiting!!!

any advantages and disadvantages of using magic jack?
is local Canadian 911 available? can I cancel my phone service without affecting my ADSL connection?
How much does the Magic jack cost? any FAQs I can refer to?
Why do I get a déjà vue kind of feeling? It must be because I heard that one before except they said first quarter 2009 and a year before that you guess it that was first quarter 2008! You know just to give an excuse to the Linux crowd to buy the damn thing during Christmas shopping!

[sdowney717]

my advice is dont buy the thing until its driver works in your os.
and now i hear they will sell an improved better hardware device.

Also, you know this is locked to your account email. beware buying a used magic jack

[alswilling]

>>any advantages and disadvantages of using magic jack?

I have been using Magic Jack off and on since this time last year, and IMHO there are more disadvantages than advantages.

First of all, if you're running anything other than Windows or Intel-based Mac OS, it won't work--at least it won't work correctly--and it isn't compatible with Mac OS X if it isn't on an Intel-based machine. As other posters on this and other related threads have attested, use of Magic Jack on any flavor of Linux is hit or miss.

Even on Windows, whether XP, Vista, or Windows 7, Magic Jack is unreliable as a land line or home phone. I know from experience.

Then there are the ISPs. I haven't tried to run it on Charter yet, because I don't live in an area served by Charter. This area has Comcast, and Comcast has a nasty habit--and it's intentional--of disrupting calls made from or received by Magic Jack. They want you to use their VIOP phone service, and even though it's illegal for them to do it, they WILL wreak havoc with your Magic Jack connections, then they'll swear that it isn't them. A friend in Michigan had that problem with Comcast, and he finally got them to admit that they had been interfering with his Magic Jack service. Also, a friend of his had electronically monitored his Internet connection (at my friend's request) and determined that Comcast was, indeed, interfering with his MJ service. After he threatened to sue them, saying that he had documentation that proved that they had interfered with his service, they stopped messing with him. That, though, doesn't always work. Unless you have some sort of proof that it's them interfering with your Magic Jack service, they won't heed your threats or warnings--and it doesn't clear up the other problems with MJ.

Another disadvantage to Magic Jack is using it on a wireless connection. Wireless connections send and receive data in packets. Under some circumstances, the rate of transfer varies, and pauses in the data transfer are not uncommon. During those pauses, if the person on the other end is talking, you will miss however many words the person says during that pause. Likewise, when you are talking, if there's a pause in data transfer while you're talking, the person on the other end will miss the words you spoke during the pause. I have missed whole sentences and have had to have the person on the other end repeat what they said. That gets annoying fast. The severity of those interruptions varies from one call to the next.

Magic Jack also has a number of bugs that need to be addressed. In reality, they need to redesign the hardware.

One such bug is crashing. Magic Jack will sometimes crash if Notepad is opened. It will almost certainly crash if Firefox is launched; and there ard there are other programs that will cause MJ to crash. When MJ crashes, it will reboot itself, but if the program that caused MJ to crash is still open, then it will shut down and reboot again, over and over until MJ is unplugged or the offending program is closed. Sometimes MJ will shut down even if no other programs are running, especially if the MJ display is minimized.

Another such bug is loss of audio, sometimes on the send side and sometimes on the receive side. For example, my brother's wife is in the hospital in ICU in different state from where I live. I phoned him using Magic Jack, but after two sentences, he could no longer hear anything I was saying, but I could hear him just fine. That happened three times. When it happened the third time, I just had to abandon the MJ idea and use my cell phone to call him. That has happened during business calls, too. It has also happened the other way round when I was talking to my mother, and that is a local call. That time, though, she could hear me, but I couldn't hear her.

Another bug is disconnection of a call after a certain amount of time, which can vary from 2-30 minutes. I have lost count of the times that I have called my mother or sister and mid-conversation we would be disconnected. I never heard anything but sudden silence on my end, but my mother and sister said that every time we would be disconnected, there would be a blast of blaring music for a second or two, then nothing. Whether that is a MJ problem or Comcast's interference, I don't know. I suspect that it's Comcast.

These problems occur whether I am using a phone or a headset. I use a Uniden wireless phone connected to the computer through MJ, and it works fine. I also have a good headset that I use connected directly to the computer's input/output jacks on my sound card. They work well, too. I have no bad jacks and no shorts in the wiring at all. The problems are with MJ and/or Comcast.

So, it is my opinion that Magic Jack is another "not ready for prime time" gadget made and distributed by a company that operates like a cheap, fly-by-night company only in it for the money, with no regard for customer satisfaction. The hardware is obviously made with the cheapest components the manufacturer can find, and the design has some flaws that put me off the whole idea.

While the price is attractive, the reality of it is anything but.

And THAT's what I have to say about it. If I remember other problems, I'll post them.

[Chris Edgell]

Oh, thank you for such a commprehensive view of the MagicJack.

[robertcoulson]

Remember, when you high speed goes off line MagicJack doesn't work, also doesn't work when your power goes off...When you are connected directly to the Telephone Company and your power goes off, most have battery back up for at least 8 hours...Something to remember.
Bob

[MasterNetra]

Magicjack, you do pay yearly, its cheap though and when you purchase a magicjack they toss in the first year of service. While using it there was a problem with volume. You could here the person calling you well enough but even with your volume control set to max they could barely hear you. I also suggest you have on a 512kb connection or faster. I had to have mine connected to my laptop and I could only do wireless (256) and the line was often choppy.

[sudoer541]

thanks for your views on magic jack everyone.
I will wait until the Linux version is released and I might give it a try.
At the moment I dont have a wireless internet, but my speed is 1.3Mbps and soon it will be about 2Mbps.

[sudoer541]

I heard the magic jack guys are coming out with magic jack for cellphones. it sounds great but I think they might get themselves in to trouble.

[Warpnow]

Unlimited Skype calling anywhere in the US is 2.95 a month and they support linux...without those crappy ads my friend with magicJack had. In addition, the hardware component...why is it necessary? I don't get it. I wouldn't want to have to carry hat around. I just have skype on my netbook.

[ubunterooster]

http://ooma.com
ditch MJ!!!!!

[Psumi]

http:/ooma.com
ditch MJ!!!!!

I've heard issues with their products, specifically, reuse of MAC Addresses (Which you must use to register your device.)

Their forums are also only for ooma customers, and guests cannot see it at all. I was close to getting one, but found out dozens upon dozens of people had the issue I just mentioned.

otherwise, it's a good product, doesn't need any OS to run.

[ubunterooster]

I've heard issues with their products, specifically, reuse of MAC Addresses (Which you must use to register your device.)

Their forums are also only for ooma customers, and guests cannot see it at all. I was close to getting one, but found out dozens upon dozens of people had the issue I just mentioned.

otherwise, it's a good product, doesn't need any OS to run.
The reuse of mac addresses was a problem they had early on. I heard that this has been resolved.

[sudoer541]

Once they support Linux, I will buy it.
although I was thinking to uninstall ubuntu and stay with windows xp. I changed my mind because if something happens to windows I can always access my files from ubuntu and if something happens with ubuntu...then....?
anyway, linux support will be here in first Q of 2010.
One thing that attracts me is the magic jack for cellphones! does anyone have more info ?

[rustymercedes]

I use my mj to call Argentina. I add 40$ to thing and it works great. I get 1200 minutes to call down there. Ive had my computer on for over a year and blow out the CPU occasionaly. I had no issues with it. I have notice that you cant enter numbers to like a bank robot but I only expect it to work good on voice calls. I have comcast cable internet which is smoking fast. I dont use the computer that its on so I dont worry about the popup screen that happens on out or in calls. I didnt buy the thing to replace a home phone. I bought it to reduce my cell phone minutes. I use the cell for all of the issues that mj has. I guess thats why I am very pleased with it. I do want it to be able to use linux so I can kick windows out of the house!!! The electricity? I dont care! I think if they went to a linux system they could just build a tiny box to connect to the internet and thats it. Hey I want everybody to remember that's My Idea

[steveglenn01]

It is wonderful, except one negative point that you have to keep your PC/Laptop switched on all the time. I am using it for three months and no issues. I use it with MTNL Delhi broadband (256 kBPS), and the voice quality is reasonably good. The best part is that you can receive calls / voicemail and you have a real USphone number.

[sudoer541]

It is wonderful, except one negative point that you have to keep your PC/Laptop switched on all the time. I am using it for three months and no issues. I use it with MTNL Delhi broadband (256 kBPS), and the voice quality is reasonably good. The best part is that you can receive calls / voicemail and you have a real USphone number.

you dont have to have it on all the time.
Who is going to call you at 3 am?
but for those who want magic jack on all the time, they should get a cheap laptop from garage sale and problem solved.

[forrestcupp]

Magic Jack Pluses:

It's really cheap, much cheaper than Vonage
It works well
It's reliable
If your computer/internet is off, you still get voicemails
Voicemails are sent to your email


Minuses:

You can't choose your phone number prefix
If you're streaming video or something, MJ's audio is choppy
You only get calls when your computer is on and your internet is working
The volume is kind of quiet


I have a headless desktop that I use for a print server and to run Magic Jack, so I never have to think about it. In my opinion, it's definitely worth having.


http://ooma.com
ditch MJ!!!!!It's $249.99. No thanks.