Magic Jack Review

I reserve the right to remove this post at any time, as it's just a stupid blog post anyway. :)

So I ordered Magic Jack to see for myself just how much money I could save by getting rid of my home phone line. I upgraded my DSL to 3 Mbps to ensure I'd have better call quality. (Supposedly this wasn't necessary, but I wanted an excuse to upgrade my bandwidth a little as the 1.5 Mpbs was kind of lacking.)

I also got my "latest and greatest" PC up and running (fresh XPSP3 OS install) and tweaked out to top performance.

Also I've been in Telecom for the past dozen years or so, and am well versed in any troubleshooting that may have arisen when the time came to install it.

So let's start with the install, then the performance, results, and overall impressions. Then I'll list my pros & cons.

The install was simple. You plug it in, a splash screen comes up (that you cannot minimize.) It takes a couple files, including .exe's, and dumps them onto your c:\temp directory on the PC. (Note I said "your." It's profile specific. I'll write about that later.) It puts a shortcut for the Magic Jack loader on your desktop and you can launch it whenever you want. You enter your registration info, and in about 2 minutes you're up and running. Really, it was that easy. The rest is semantics... E911 registration only took a couple more minutes. (A little 911 "light" goes green on the display when you're registered to your address.)

Now come the fun parts. I logged in another profile (my wife's,) and the shortcut wasn't/couldn't be displayed. Not ideal, as the interface would be nice to see for whomever is logged in. Honestly though, I think the interface (display) is only needed for initial install. Plus, it likes to pop up annoyingly (to me at least) when an incoming call arrives. Reminds me of the several call centers over the years that I've done installations on ;)

To get around this, and ensure it starts up when the PC starts without my intervention, I made a scheduled task to always run it on startup. The added benefit of doing it this way was that the interface screen no longer appears nor pops up when calls come in. Now that that's done, I can live with it more comfortably.

Test calls were a piece of cake. They sounded far, far better than my standard analog telco calls, which really suprised me. I expected at least a little jitter due to choppy sampling or bandwidth issues, but for the past couple of weeks, it's sounded perfect. Now once in a while, when my cordless phone goes off-hook (that means the green button people) it won't receive dial tone, but I've never had to cycle that more than once.

So once you get it set up the way YOU want it, you can't beat it for the price. Really.

Pros:
-Great call quality (actually suprisingly good)
-Free Long Distance & e911 registration.
-Free voicemail & Call NUMBER id (not true caller ID, but close)
-Free call forwarding.
-Can take it anywhere you want and call for free!
-It's $20 a year!
-NO MORE RIDICULOUS TAXES on your ATT/Telco bill!

Cons:
-Can't really do much w/ voicemail options (changing the default 4 rings to 3 or 6 or 6 would be nice) ***This negates your existing VoiceMail machine if it can't pick up before 4 rings***
-Can only be run when PC (and Cable Modem/DSL router) is on. (Buy a UPS people! It's 2010!)
-Cannot port number from old existing number, but this is supposed to be available in August 2010 for a fee!
-Caller ID won't display alpha characters, only the number. This is because Magic Jack has no way to interface with your local Central Office, which is were CID programmming is done for your land line. Keep that in mind. May be a dealbreaker.

I'm also on the fence about the way voicemail is run. You have to call it, like you would with your cell, to retrieve messages. It also sends a notifier to your email. In other words, there is no indicator you have messages unless you check your mail or call it. To be honest, that's in a way quite forward thinking, as everything is moving in that direction anyway. VM machines will die off soon with the advent of smarter mobile phones with people's constant online presence. Why engineer in features that are losing popularity and function anyway?

So it's got some obstacles you may want to consider, but it's primary function ultimatel goal does work as advertised. I think I'll stick with it for good once I get my existing number ported to it. I can live w/ the Caller ID and voicemail items for now. I mostly use my cell now anyway. :)