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Home » Featured, Other Telephony Products

Magic Jack – Too good to be true?

20 December 2008 View Comments

You can click the following link to enhance the reading of this article: Reading Blinds.

Magic Jack

Courtesy of John from the So Cal Phone Pros forum. Sign up is free!

Is the Magic Jack really too good to be true?

Recently I did a job for a mortgage company that was getting rid of their conventional land lines and replacing them with two Magic Jacks they had purchased.  I had seen them before on infomercials but this would be my first up close and personal introduction.  I was intrigued going into the job and excited about giving them a hands on field test.

For those of you who haven’t heard of the Magic Jack.  It’s a USB device that plugs into your computer and provides you with an analog line to use.  Once plugged in, it will search for a local line and you have your pick from a list of numbers.  I believe that you can also port over your existing line to the Magic Jack.  Don’t quote me on that.  The great selling point though is the plan.  (This is all from the customer by the way)  They paid 40 bucks to get the Magic Jack and a year of service.   The service includes unlimited calls to the US and Canada.   Subsequent years of service are at a rate of 20 bucks a year.  That’s right folks, unlimited calls to the US and Canada for 20 bucks a year.  20 BUCKS!!  Unbelievable, right?  Too good to be true, right?

Ahem……. well I’m a little skeptical by nature.  I haven’t always been that way.  It was a gradual progression from years and years of dealing with well, quite frankly….. other people.  I’m especially skeptical when a huge money saving idea like this comes along.  There’s just got to be a catch……..

THE CATCH

I’ll let you judge for yourself.

As for my personal experience, I found it to be a pretty cool product.

The customer has 4 line phones and I put them into the system on lines 3 and 4 with no problems. (Besides the onsite cabling, but that’s another story) The voice quality sounded good when I was on the phone. The customer did complain about a little “tinniness” (if that’s a word) but he had never used VOIP before either and they had absolutely no QoS on their circuit. One thing I did notice was that one of the guys had to restart his Magic Jack program on a few separate occasions in order for it to work. That may be contributed to his computer though; in all fairness.

For now I think I’ll hold off on getting the Magic Jack. If some of the issues get resolved I think it definitely has a ton of potential.

Happy Holidays!

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John
forums.socalphonepros.com
www.socalphonepros.com

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  • mrdarrellstanford
    I want to know were do i go to get magic jacks because I would like to get magic jack for my telephone, internet, and my tv. My husband and I have been dispointed , plus I would like to know how do i contact you. Do you have a phone number that i can call you or which store do i go to .My name is Mr & Mrs Darrell Stanford.We live in Crisfield, Maryland. I filled out the application, but I would like to know how to contact you . Thank you, Mr & Mrs Stanford. I was asking for a number because I can go to my sister's house and call. I would like DSL serviceand not dial-up service it's to slow, Plus I will be going to College in the fall. So can you help us please.
  • I am sure with a simple web search you can find a place to purchase a Magic Jack. Heck, I think I've seen them selling in the local Wal-Mart!

    I must say that I am having a bit of trouble getting clarity on why you want to contact me directly. I don't sell the Magic Jack; I simply wrote an article about it. I'm also not sure what you meant by filling out an application.

    If you think I can help, please feel free to contact me HERE.
  • Billie
    I've tried Majic Jack now for 6 months and find it to be extremely unreliable. I have to "restart" Majic Jack before every call. Sometimes I have to restart the computer before a call, because just restarting Majic Jack didn't do the trick. When on a call I get cut off sometimes. I've tried Majic Jack on two laptops and one desktop. It is unreliable on all three computers. If you can put up with the headaches...its a steal!!
    Personally, I gave up and got Vonage instead.
  • The only catch is that you have to have access to high speed internet. That is if you are dialing a US or Canadian number.

    I just gave my son inlaw one for Christmas and he left last weekend for Iraq. I will let you know how it works from there.

    You can see my blog entry at greatwhitetechnologies.blogspot.com
  • Thanks for the comment Pat! I like the idea of using this instead of roaming. I suppose you could be anywhere in the world to place a call as long as you're dialing a US number, you'll still be within the $20 annual plan.
  • I have been using my magic jack for the last 6 months for traveling. I have used it on woreless networks, wired networks and my sprint wireless air card. It of course works best on the wired network but it has done equally as well on wireless but the upload speed was too slow on my Sprint wireless card. I could hear the caller fine but I was breaking up on them.

    I used this in Canada instead of roaming charges on my cell phone.

    This is funny because I was just in the process of writing about this product in my blog and I found this. What a conicidence
  • This is a great write John! Thanks for the contribution.

    Ironically I just saw an infomercial on this a few days ago and like you I was a bit skeptical. Not sure if it has any place in the business world yet, but definitely sounds like a viable alternative to my daughters home telephone line (which is ALWAYS in use).
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