magicJack Inventor Plans Linux Support, Improved Customer Service, and More

Laptop Magazine ^ | April 28th | Jeff Wilson

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

Mac OS X support has been added to magicJack. Could Linux compatibility be coming down the pipe? DB: Yes, and because the of the similarities between the Mac and Linux OSes, we should be able to support Linux fairly soon.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

This magic jack is even cheaper than my skype! But I like my standalone skype phone, this MJ needs to be tied to a powered up computer running something other than linux.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

Reviews on Majicjack are all over the map. Right now I’m calling my wife’s family in England, my sister in Italy, friends in Australia, Greece and anywhere in the US and Canada for $6.66/month unlimited with Skype. There are 25 countries in their unlimited talk plan. The only downside is that there are a lot of people dumping landlines and Skype charges as much as 30 cents/minute to cell phones in some of the countries (England is one of them, the US is free to cell phones). There is a 30-day free trial offer on Magicjack, ends today if you feel like giving it a try.

[ShadowAce]

[TomGuy]

I read some of the fine print right on the Magic Jack website. If I understand it correctly, their infomercials are somewhat deceptive.

It seems that MJ is its own phone network. You pay $20 for the jack and a $20 annual access fee. You can call anyone anywhere at no additional cost, if they are members of the Magic Jack network.

The infomercial implies that you can call anyone anywhere. However, if you call a real telephone number outside the MJ Network, you get charged an access/per-minute fee. So your cost can run much more than the advertised $19.95 per year.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

So you would end up porting your “real” phone number that you have right now that would only end up working on the magic jack network?

That doesn’t seem correct to me.

^^^^^^^^^^^You can call anyone anywhere at no additional cost, if they are members of the Magic Jack network.^^^^^^^^^

Maybe they have an additional charge for regular phone calls.

[MrsEmmaPeel]

That has not been our experience.

[TomGuy]

That has not been our experience.

Care to elaborate?

[webschooner]

We use have used Click4prepaid.com for overseas calling for a long time — cheapest we have found for calling Mexico & Philippines (15.5 cents per minute for Philippines).

Call quality is a lot better than those calling cards they sell in the Asian grocery stores, plus with those calling cards, they take away minutes if you get a busy signal or no answer. Click4prepaid does not do that. Refill your account at their website with a credit card, and immediately after a call, refresh the website and shows correctly the amount left in your account, and minutes never seem to expire. (no I don’t work for them — we have just benn very satisfied with them for several years)

[sionnsar]

calling card ping

[rerat0120]

The infomercial implies that you can call anyone anywhere. However, if you call a real telephone number outside the MJ Network, you get charged an access/per-minute fee. So your cost can run much more than the advertised $19.95 per year.

You can call any phone # in the Continental US (lower 48) and Canada for free, that has a land line. I am not including calls to satellite, radio phones, etc... You can receive most calls from any part of the world, additional charges might be incurred by caller, but they should be the same additional charges that they already pay, when calling your home land line phone, from their country.

While traveling I have mine hooked up to a Dell laptop (Insprion 1100) with a headset connected, some hotel telephone equipment are programmed in a certain way that MJ might not work with them, while staying at a hotel that provides Internet access. Calls made to my MagicJack #, both from my home local area & long distance were received with the laptop. No additional charges were incurred to the caller, that would not have occurred when MJ was connected to my home lines. Even though I was 100's miles away from my home.

If I used MJ for business purposes, and had a group of customers in a different city. I would consider purchasing this device, and set set a local # for that City. This way a salesperson can receive calls from that clients in that city, and not have them incur long distance charges. Maybe for a small company, this will help avoid incurring additional costs, and not having a need getting an 1-800-XXX-XXXX Number. And send with my salesperson another MJ device, with a number in the company's local area, so when they call back to the office with updates of the business trip, the business does not incur long distance bills.

And another interesting way to use this device, for a person that has family all in the same area code, or region, and they live 1000's miles away from them. Buy this device, and hook it to a separate phone, get a phone number that is local to the relatives, or won't cost them a lot of long distance charges. And have them call that number, so you will create a "Family Hot-Line"!!! Just a thought.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"You can call anyone anywhere at no additional cost, if they are members of the Magic Jack network."

I have MJ, and that is flatly false.

You can call anywhere in America. Overseas calls can be made by prepaying minutes. Calls to Germany, for example, are $0.02 per minute. The overseas network is AT&T, so quality is excellent.

Your MJ experience will depend on your Internet connection's quality and, to an extent, the computer it's running on. It consumes about 90kB/sec when in use.

A Linux implementation will be very nice, as Linux is happier and more stable than Windows being run 24/7, and you will be able to use cheaper hardware. But for now, it supports Mac and Windows and does its job well.

Its major advantage vs. Skype is that you can use regular phones with it. We have our MJ connected to a wireless phone, so the whole house is covered.

[MrsEmmaPeel]

It’s just an inexpensive VOIP phone service. We were Vonage customers - no more. Incoming calls may incur a long distance fee, but that’s an issue with the incoming caller and the plan he is on. Everyone I know is on an unlimited call plan within the US, so they were not billed a fee- neither are we for outgoing. We are not billed extra for incoming.

[TomGuy]

Okay. Thanks for your input.

I must have mis-read their terms/agreement a while ago (one insomniac morning around 3 a.m., when I saw their infomercial).

I thought it indicated that they were a private network, and there were additional charges to dial ‘regular’ phone numbers. Apparently, from your ‘real life’ experience with MJ, that is not true.

I still am wondering about their pricing. Even with VOIP, the FED gets something like $6/month. Cox Cable now has phone, too. They charge a minimum of $16/month, and that FED $6 is in their fine print. So their minimum monthly charge is $21 + state and local taxes.

I will check out the MJ website again, then.

[MrsEmmaPeel]

I still am wondering about their pricing

Don't wonder why they charge so little -- ask why the others charge so much.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

All I can say about their pricing is, it is indeed $20/year for unlimited North American usage, and damn cheap for international calls. You can use standard telephones, or if you prefer to plug a headset into your computer, you can do that too. 411 calls are free. If you travel, you can carry the little USB thingie with you; go online, plug it in, and make phone calls as if you were sitting at home-- no roaming charges, and no usurious fees if your travels take you overseas. It's the Internet, baby! Groovy.

I have no idea how they get around the tax issues you mention, except to note that other internet players such as Skype also seem to get around 'em. It's probably a case where Congress is clueless. (Is there any other case? [grin]) Government's larceny probably just hasn't caught up with technology yet.

When you sign up, chances are excellent you can get a number in your area code; if you like the service then for $10 you can switch your landline phone number to them and tell the phone company to go pound sand. MagicJack makes it easy to try its device and service, returning the unit for a refund if you don't like it, for example if your Internet connection is not of high enough quality to give a good MJ experience. Your mileage may vary, but it works well in our experience, and my wife has declared the sound quality to be the best of our several phone setups (landline, cell and now MagicJack).

(They can't get their Linux version out fast enough for me, though! Running a Windows machine 24/7 is asking for trouble. But I have several old PCs that would make great Linux-based MagicJack portals but which wheeze and shudder under the burdens of Windows XP. C'mon, MajicJack, get your Linux version done!)

I've noticed no downside. Some commentators have warned that MJ could put ads on your computer's screen based on your calling; that hasn't happened here, and since we use wireless phones strewn throughout the house, there's zero chance the screen would be looked-at, anyway. I've seen no email spam, nor have we received any nuisance calls.

There's lots going on in the telephony world. Check out http://www.google.com/grandcentral/index.html too-- sounds very useful.

[BJungNan]

I use it with my laptop when traveling. Just have to plug the hotel phone in and it works fine.

Today a friend finally got MJ and he called to say, hey, this works clear as a bell. It really works. Well, duh!

[BJungNan]

Not true.

[BJungNan]

Look, just get the thing. It only cost $40. You use it and try it. You find out it is reliable. You disconnect your land line at home and save $35 a month.

You have more than enough people on here to tell you it works that the $40 is not really a risk. Besides, you can return it if you don’t like.

Do yourselve a favor and trust the people on FR. They will rarely if ever steer you wrong. The dang thing works. It is my home phone replacing my land line. Its better than the land line was. very satisfied

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"Do yourselve a favor and trust the people on FR. They will rarely if ever steer you wrong."

Y'know, you're absolutely right about that. I've gotten some very good advice here, often about products and technologies I'd never heard of.

We rock!

[bigdcaldavis]

OMG. Magicjack supporting Linux. SWEET! When that happens, I’ll be able to call my sweet Aja for free (other than the cost of the Magicjack and the annual service fee).