Magic Jack Phone Service - Comments Page 1

I have been using Magicjack for a week now. I am very pleased with it. There was a problem with an echo on my end but with a little tweaking that went away and I can tell no difference in the quality of the calls.

I am going to keep my land line for another couple of weeks to see if there are any other problems. Then I plan to just use the Magicjack for my home phone.

I see by their ads that I can renew my subscription for 5 years for $59. That is quite a savings over my usual phone bill of $45 a month. I hope they stay in business that long.

I've had Magic Jack for approximately two months now, and have not experience any problems with it whatsoever. I am using it with a Uniden cordless phone that has a base right next to the computer and Magic Jack in my basement and a remote handset / charger upstairs. I have not experienced any voice degradation or fading of a signal at all.

I am quite pleased with the sound quality and absolutely impressed with the feature bundle it comes with and last but not least the terrific price.

If their was (1) short coming, and in my case I do not see it as a shortcoming, but actually a blessing... After (60) minutes on a call, the Magic Jack unit ends the call without notice. I experienced that twice. Now I do not usually talk for that long and both times it occurred, boy was I happy to get off the phone. So you see what I mean, in my case it was a blessing.

If you are in need of a phone line, Magic Jack will cost you about a buck a month if you go for the 5 year plan and about five dollars a month for electricity to run your computer 24 / 7. I recommend it. -- Bryan

You cant use it in UAE and other countries such as China but you are not advised or told when you make the purchase

I've had Majic Jack for 4 months now and it works great, even sends an email when a message is left. The email has a .wav file you can listen to. Only complaint is that when windows updates it often restarts the computer so I have to restart Majic Jack. Overall, a majic product.

I tried Magic Jack for several months and quit. I experienced dropped calls, poor sound, crippled service, pc corruptions and more. The worst part is no tech support. . . .NONE!!! I call it tragic Jack.

I've had MagicJack for about 6 Months, no problems whatsoever. I also like the fact that your PC needs to be on to make or receive calls. This way I can just let them go to Voice mail and answer them at my leisure. I have a Cell Phone for emergency calls, and really don't need a landline phone, but for $19.95 a Year, why not.

I have used MagicJack for just over one year now - just renewed service. The complaints about voice quality when using the computer for other internet-intensive services is true, so I simply pause them when making a call. The convenience of taking my MJ with me if & when I travel along with my laptop is great, and as long as I take the precaution as just described, the sound quality is equal to any service I have ever used. When I had problems early on, even Mr. Borislow got directly involved with resolving them, which really surprised me.

Latent complaints: The idiot thing will steal focus of your cursor every once in a while, and for people who type by watching their fingers instead of the screen, this is a MAJOR pisser. Also, it seems to renew it's software on a somewhat occasional basis, which is good, but it keeps sticking it's icon back on my desktop after I have deleted it, which I find annoying.

Bottom line: I have not tried any completely free service, such as Skype, but otherwise, MJ is my only "land line". I wish they would handle the two complaint areas I have, but as it is said, I wouldn't throw her out of bed for eating crackers.

Uses up the major part of your CPU. Major Major problem

While I have not signed up yet, I won't be signing up for the very simple reason that when power goes out (storm, accident, etc) a land line with a non-wireless phone is needed to communicate with the world.... Yes, a cell phone could be used for this purpose, but, that implies that a person would still need something beyond just the Magic Jack. Of course a power generator might be an answer if you want to spend some more money...

I have used the MJ for about 6 mons on and off. I have 2 of them. I only use them as back up or traveling. The quality has not been good, therefor I would not want to use it as my primary phone service until the quality issues are resolved. Its so cheap that its easy to keep one at work and one at home or one with my laptop while traveling. If the device could be refined just a touch, it will be an amazing product.

We had Magic jack for 2 months now. we are basically happy with it, especially considering the price. We use it with a splitter to connect a FAX and a multi cordless phone set, so our whole house is covered. Magic Jack says they do not support FAX, and I find that it does not always work, but FAX machines keep retrying if it doesn't work the first time, and eventually it does get a clean enough connection. Voice quality is normally just fine, with a minor glitch now and then. The only gripe I have is that MJ will only let your phone ring about 4 times, or less, before going to voice mail, so I cannot use my answering machine, which I would prefer.

I run my MJ off of an old dog of a laptop with barely any memory, and WinXP with no problems. That laptop was so slow, I did not use it anymore, so now it is just of in the corner, stripped down to minimum, doing nothing but running my MJ. I put my other equipment on a UPS so that in a power failure I still have phones for several hours, but typically without power, you will have no phone with MJ if you just plug things into the wall like most people. I just happened to have this stuff pretty much lying around. Most folks also have a cell phone too.

I did use online chat Tech Support once, and they were very responsive.

All in all, for price of an average month of phone, you get a whole year of decent service. It is a good value. My parents now use one too, as their long distance phone service.

I'm under the impression that if you have several phones, they _each_ have to be connected to the Magic Jack. You either have a splitter and wires running all over the house, or one Magic Jack/computer for each phone. It does not use the existing home wiring. Is this true?

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm pretty sure you could plug the MJ into the wall jack, instead of a phone, thereby powering all the phones in the house. That's the way most VOIP systems work.

I have used MagicJack for about 5 months now and I use it for all of my outgoing long distance calls. Limitations: You need USB2; USB1 is too slow; You need a 'faster' processor, my old HP running at 833 wouldn't do it; You may need to slow down your fax transmission speed if you intend to send faxes with it. I use a cordless Sony phone with it and the sound quality is great.

I'm contemplating getting the MJ, does anyone know if this system has FAX capability?? I want to get rid of my landline, that I use for faxing only.

I have used Magic Jack for almost a year for calls to Hawaii. The quality is excellent and I have not experienced any problems. $20 a year is cheap.

I would be interested to know what internet connections and computer configurations people have when they use these services. Dial up, broadband, satellite, etc.? Are they using an old Pentium II with 128mb ram or a newer multi-core cpu and gobs of ram?

I think it's imposible to make a statement about performance of the SERVICE (magicjack, skype, etc) without considering the infrastructure (PC & connection speed). Imagine trying to run something like this over a satellite connection with its latency issues, vs a 15Mbit broadband connection with a decent computer!

the majic jack is great ,ive taken it with me to the philippines and used it to call home and too my job,it worked perfect,these long distance calls would have cost me around $10;00 to $20;00 dollars for the lenght of time i called.they are now even selling them in the philippines in manila,and rest assure that most internet cafees will be using them also,once they discover theres money to be made by renting them out,so yes they work,and ive told mant a people about them,great devise..david

I bought the Magic Jack--used it for a month and discovered my phone bill DOUBLED!!

EDITOR'S NOTE: That's crazy... if you were using the Magic Jack, you wouldn't be using the phone company service at all! If you're serious, tell me what specifically showed up on your phone bill that was not there before.

I've used MJ for almost a year now, and after the company replaced my unit it works fairly well.

There have been frequent problems with sound quality, sounding garbled, sometimes an echo, and very frequent complaints by people who I am calling that my voice volume is too low and I have to shout. Friends who have MJ have similar complaints from people they call (to regular old telephone lines).

I have found their tech support to be very iffy. At times I was told they'd call me back with updated info but have NEVER been called back.

You cannot put your PC into Standby mode (XP)when the MJ is plugged in to the USB port. Nothing will happen -- you have to unplug the unit first, and then of course it boots up the software again (a minute or two) when you plug it back in.

Sometimes it works on one USB port but not another. The voice mail feature is nice (because of the e-mail followup), but I only use the MJ for outgoing calls. And you must have your PC turned on and booted in order to use the MJ to make calls. That can be a pain.

Yes, their website is annoying and untruthful (with the today-only bargain rates and the number of units available). It does make the company look slip-shod, unethical, and fly-by-night. Also, some of their commercials with a girl showing how to plug it in and immediately place a call, are untruthful because it takes a minute or two to load the software EVERY TIME the MJ is plugged in. So the company is already trying to pull the wool over our eyes. What do these things say about the company?

I have to say I am impressed with the system as a whole in this infancy stage. I am not one of those people who talk for an hour or more so I have not experienced that issue. The screen saver or gaming has not been an issue for me, 32 bit OS with more than 4 gig of memory… Oh there is another nice feature I found, it is the email notification feature that sends notice to you when you have received a voice mail. But you cannot retrieve your voice mail message from say a cell phone or from any other phone. You have to go through the MagicJack device. Maybe a future change for them or to develop.

I was not impressed with the readable material for setting up the device for Windows Vista. My set up problems was more then 1 or 2 issues. The auto USB recognition did not happen for me. Part of the issue was the device seems to come preloaded with the XP set up. I had to go to the home web site and download the Vista driver interface. I then had to do a live chat that did not want to first automate or start the chat for me, a minor issue. Once the chat started the help seemed good and relevant but incomplete as a knowledge base of experience. They did not state or share information that you might have to reboot your system more than a time or 2 to get the software to initiate in both the OS and within the USB device itself. I waited several times more than an hour before the initiation would pop and start as the help file had stated. Actually never did pop, I had chatted with them and had the chat escalated to a manger before a statement to rebooted the system was given.

Another weak area is the obtaining a phone number. This issue is with the Caller ID area identifier. I live in a rural type area, so the detailing area code number information I live in was not available. This may sound confusing but I will try to explain! The General Service area code number was there to obtain, however the subdivision of the identifier was not. I will try it this way, I was not able to get a phone number that had a Caller ID to the actual city I live in but had a neighboring town ID. - I.E. when I call someone the caller ID shows the “there” city name when I live in the “here” city. So it is confusing for people to know who is calling because there is more than 20 miles between these city sub-identifier information ID’s. Additionally if they want to return the call they may not have a local phone call number to call but an extended or long distance number to dial. I still do recommend it as a whole for making calls and being cheap! -- Tom