MAGIC JACK is pretty cool VOIP

[badmts]

See I use T-mobile prepaid cause I can get 1100 min for $100 and they last a year not 3 or 4 months and I don't get dinged for just having the phone sit idle. Well I live near McChord Air Field (downgraded from AFB due to JBLM annexation) and it is a HUGE DEAD SPOT so I got this magic jack deal and it is pretty cool ,really clear,really cheap and a feature I just found is it uses your web based email as an answering machine! ANY OTHER VOIP USERS?

 

[JFortner5]

Not yet but I have been thinking about it. We are about to buy our first house, and I would like to have a home phone, but I really don't want to pay $30 or $40 a month for something that wouldn't get used much.

I guess you could wire it up to activate all of the phone jacks in a house couldn't you? Hell I'd just get cordless phones though.

 

[slammer67]

I thought about going that route, but to use that service, you have to have you're computer on ALL the time, so I wondered how much it would cost in electricity and computer "wear" to use the phone.

 

[straycat]

I have seen it advertised for a long time now. You are the first person I have heard of that has Magic Jack. We don't have a home phone, got rid of it a few years ago. Saved over $90 a month. We just use the cell phones. Now, we don't get any of those idiot solicitors like we used to on the old home phone landline. It is so nice and peaceful at home now.

 

[countryboy]

had majic jack for almost two yrs. got it hooked up on a junky computer that is good for just that...

 

[rrbrian222]

I use VOIP exclusively, don't even own a cell phone at the moment. After researching this extensively, I settled on Ooma, and after paying $150 for the device during the Newegg black Friday special last year, I now pay a whopping $3.47/month for service. The best part is I don't have to leave my computer running 24/7 like you do if you want Magic Jack to behave like a normal phone line. Ooma handles all the internet overhead itself and doesn't need a separate computer to offload signal processing duties to.

The call quality is amazing, unlimited local and long distance, though international calls are extra, but I have no need for that. I can check my calls from home just like an old-school answering machine or anywhere on earth via the web.

My opinion is that Magic Jack is best for people who travel and stay in hotels a lot (business folk) and Ooma is better for the home/office user.

http://www.amazon.com/Ooma-Telo-Free-Phone-Service/dp/B002O3W4LE

 

[ES894x4]

I thought about going that route, but to use that service, you have to have you're computer on ALL the time, so I wondered how much it would cost in electricity and computer "wear" to use the phone.

yahoo says you can save a whole whopping $14 per year if you shut your computer all the way off, as opposed to leaving it on sleep, but those are just generalities.

 

[rrbrian222]

My relatively up-to-date Asus M4A88T-V EVO/USB3 motherboard with on-board graphics and AMD Phenon II X2 545 processor (core unlocker inactive) idles at 85 watts (102 watts with my Hauppauge video capture card active). (I have a Kill-a-watt power meter)

At $0.13/kilowatt-hr, it would cost $96.80/year to keep my system up 24/7. The Ooma device runs at 4.1 watts and I paid $150 for it as outlined above. No way would I choose Magic Jack with those kind of overhead costs. Ooma makes much more fiscal sense for me, but then again, I'm pretty cheap, lol.

My Dell Vostro 1510 laptop consumes a mere 40 watts at idle, but I'm pretty sure that running it 24/7 would kill it after a year or two. It's not uncommon for it to go into thermal-safety shutdown mode in my car on a hot summer day. Heat kills.