Gone Shopping

After hearing someone on my vanpool mention they have one of these, we decided to look into one and check it out.

The MagicJack is a device that plugs into a USB port on your computer. From there, you plug a regular phone into it, and presto, you can make as many calls in the US as you’d like.

The cost is twenty bucks for the device, and 20 bucks per year, so startup cost is 40 bucks plus a few more for shipping.  I ordered mine on a weekend, and received it the following Wednesday, much quicker than anticipated. The quality of it is about as expected, it’s plastic and just a little on the lightweight side (meaning if I sat on it, it would probably snap in half.)

Plugging it in, and the device was quickly initialized, and as the ad says, I was up and running within 5 minutes. I quickly gave my wife a call (in the other room), and we caught up about our days. The quality was fine, and we were carefull to talk quietly enough so we couldn’t actually hear each other down the hall. I then made a long distance call, but all I got was a answering machine. However, the message sounded just fine.

Now, you may ask, why one of these?  Good question.

We used to have Vonage, and were quite happy with it. We cancelled it because we decided it got a bit expensive (around $33/month after taxes) when we still had a land line. Because of 911, we won’t get rid of the land line. (For a while, our internet was going out on a regular basis, so this was a concern because we also get no cell phone coverage at our house.) One thing I liked about it was it was router based, so nothing had to be plugged into the computer. The calls on it were always clear. 

Now, our landline works fine. But we have to pay $10 a month for long distance plus minutes. At a $120/year, considering we don’t make that many long distance calls, it’s starting to look expensive.

We could do a computer-only solution, such as Skype. That’s definitely an option, but I’d have to go buy some special headsets and stuff to I didn’t need to sit in front of the computer. Of course, because this can use my webcam, the video feed would keep me in front of the computer. Cost wise, this is really cheap, and probably worth considering if a phone choice isn’t important.  Since I do have this installed, I’ll have to compare quality when I get a chance.

Now, the MagicJack, I can just plug a cordless phone in, and be as mobile as I want around the house.

As an added bonus, you get a phone number that people can call into. And being in the middle of the bible belt, I got a perverse pleasure in the fact that the only prefix available for my area code was 666. 

Looks like anytime I want to change phone numbers, it’s just a minute or two to sign up for a new one.

The website has a 30 day guarantee on this. So, if I decide the quality isn’t worth it, I’ll return it and let y’all know my reasons why here. If I don’t mention this again, assume I’m keeping it.