Magic Jack

Has anyone used the Magic Jack? I currently don't have phone service, & really am in need of a phone, but I'm not sure I can believe all they say in their ad.

 

Hi,
I have Magic Jack on my pc now and hate it.
I had vonage then decided to save a little money and am sorry I switched.
In order for MJ to work your pc must be up at all times. Everytime a call comes in or the phone is picked up to make a call, a soft keypad screen pops up on your pc no matter if you are working on something else or not. This is very annoying. You have to manually minimize it every time. The quality is ok at best. Also there is no way to disconnect their voice mail. If you chose to use your own answering maching as I do, you have to set it to go to answering maching in less than 4 rings or else MJ will take your message. It doesn't give the customer any options to change much. You pretty much get what they decide to give you.
After installing MJ and not liking it, I decided to reinstall my vonage but discovered that my pc no longer recognized it, nor the phone number I was assigned with vonage for over 2 years and now I am waiting for vonage to call me back so I can get their service back. Something in the MJ install permenantly disconnect my vonage.:cry
If you want a better service at a great price, go with vonage.

 

Re: Magic Jack - I love it!

I personally use the MagicJack, as do several of my family members in other countries as well, and we love it. I had Vonage and got tired of the monthly telephone bills. I also had calls drop with Vonage. I had to fax information daily, another charge with vonage and a separate telephone number. It never worked well at all. Not with Magic Jack. I can also fax with my Magic Jack number and receive a fax. Never a single problem to date. It's been a year of use already. As I said, no more monthly telelphone bills. The guy obviously having the problems with his computer never said whether he had XP or Vista. For Vista, like I have (I also use one on an XP system), I went to the website and got a simple update. It was all working in a few minutes and I was making calls to Canada from the United States. He should check his computer and make sure he's at least using XP or Vista, he can even use a Mac. He should also check his system connection. You cannot use a dial-up system connection. You can use wireless, find a hotspot and call from there as well. I have and it works great!

 

I have been using it for a couple of years now chief. Is it perfect??? No, but for the price it can't be beaten...

 

I have Magic Jack and it works fine most of the time. Their ad claims it doesn't compete for many system resource, but I have found that it does cut out alot and drop calls if my kids are watching videos on You Tube, but I think that my video card is older and doesn't run very well and uses alot of RAM.

I know this is an old topic, but I was really wanting to ask a Magic Jack/Linux question. I started to post it on the Linux board and I got a windo suggesting I post it here first since there was already a thread. My OS is practically a virus because it is an OEM version of XP and I put it on this computer when the bearings went out of my other drive. Now windows says its is pirated and over the course of a year my system just keeps deteriorating because XP locks me out of files and updates and things get corrupted. I don't wan't to buy another copy until I get a new computer (since I can't use the software on more than one machine) so I want to run Linux. I will have no long distance on my phone w/o Magic Jack and Linux is not supported. I have read that Linux makes programs that are designed to run Windows software? Does anyone know about this and whether this would work for Magic Jack?