http://magicjack.com/site/index.html

Seen the infomercial after my friend told me about it yesterday.

$40 USB connector for a broadband PC/mac-to-standard phone line. Call anywhere, anytime with normal phone plus extra features for $20 yr.

Inventor was an AOL communication guy, who now came up with this using his own network (thru Canada, I believe) called "YMAX" (that name's soon going to be confusing for a lot of people!).

Looks like the phone companies are going to join the smoldering heap of print shops, newspapers and film companies soon enough in the digital revolution.

Has anyone tried this?

(The play-on-load video annoys the hell out of me so I've got a grudge for the product already.)

I've had the MagicJack USB device for about 8 months... and honestly I like it. It was a bear to set up at first since I was using an unsupported OS - Windows 2003 Server SP2 - at first, now I've switched it to a Windows Vista machine without incident.

I'd not replace my home phone with it - having to have my machine on all the darn time for it is annoying - and honestly using it in conjunction with my GrandCentral account... it's worthwhile to have. Even worked well while traveling.

But I'd not compare it to Skype or Gizmo Project. It's more like a Vonage competitor that uses your main machine as the ATA adapter. And even though it's based off of software from SJ Labs - who they had purchased from my understanding - they don't allow you to have a software only iteration - not "officially".

The updates can be problematic though... I had my number once changed inexplicably to an 206 area code number. And one update basically required me to use their MagicFix software to recover.

And to hear the gripes and pluses about the company, hit up the ( http://unofficialmagicjack.forum2u.org/ ) Unofficial MagicJack Forum... the official one sorta got cleaned out... good information and all. Heck, I lost like 100 posts in their sorting out the Win2k3 Server issue(s) alone when they did that.

It's good, far from perfect, works great for me, but isn't something that I've recommended to all of my friends quite yet. Co-exists with my existing Vonage phone system without one issue - even used both at the same time on many occasions.

Hope that helps a bit.

It does help. Thanks.

How is the software? Heavy on memory? Stable?

How is the sound quality?

magicJack.exe at tops using 18mb on my machine. UTSCSI.exe is another app that runs on insertion that allows the USB stick to be utilized... 3mb for it.

The sound... clearer than cell (which isn't that hard to accomplish), clearer than Vonage for the most part, and honestly it's clearer than my AT&T landline - which I've finally dropped. It's clear, but not if you're using bit torrents in your network... then it can skip and delay.

The software is very stable - I've been up and running for some 248 hours, as has magicJack and no issues with incoming, outgoing... only thing it does do that I can't stand... if you use IE (I don't) it will go through the favorites (I believe the magicJack client has an instance of iexplore.exe's ActiveX, can't confirm this, this was one of the problems that got "wiped clean" on the official website) and it would click just like IE would when the ad on it would update. Just silence that sound via the Sound panel in Control Panel and you're better off. And if left maximized, it would spin the drives if you're the type to put them to sleep. I'm not, so the "spin" is minimal, however it does happen.

Also, if the client is maximized, it can grab focus sometimes - I keep mine minimized when I'm not using it to avoid that.

any idea what their rates are for international calling?? like to Europe and Asia??...anyone got a link for that?...wanna abandon my local long distance provider...rip-off...


Thanx!

That's not yet ironed out... but from the initial responses when some people got a glance of the prices, it was anywhere from 40% to 100% higher than say Skype or even other carriers.

But officially, international dialing is not available.

Here's the link to the proposed International Rates - actually, I naively thought at first the international rates were free - they don't beat Gizmo or Skype, that's for sure.

http://help.magicjack.com/SupportFaq...=international

I love Magicjack. Now I love it even more that I got the caller id to work on my phone by getting a fixer from www.magicjackcallerid.com

I have been using MagicJack for about 6 months and the experience has been largely positive. I will sometimes get garbled calls, but I also had occasional problems with my Vonage service. My Vonage line and MJ coexist with little interference.

I gave my second MJ to my 10-year old--his friends are impressed that he has his own phone number and it keeps them off our main phone line.