magicJack and magicJack Plus Support, Reviews, FAQs and Hacks

johnr · Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 2:03 am Post subject: 58 Percent Success Rate

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I saw a TV advertisement for this Magic Jack a few weeks ago. Seemed like a good idea at a good price. Placed order on
December 22, it arrived December 24. I installed on December 27. I have Comcast cable internet, Alexandria, Virginia. I first installed on a Toshiba laptop with Vista, with a wireless network connection. Made a few test calls to my home phone (regular wired phone) and cell phone. Some calls were clear, some calls had choppy audio and dropouts. I then installed on my older Emachines desktop computer with Windows XP, and a direct wired connection to the router. Again, some calls were clear, and some had poor audio, apparently at random.
I then evaluated this thing more carefully. Starting the evening of Sunday December 30, through the evening of Wednesday
January 2, I placed many calls at various times of day, to recorded messages in various cities, mostly to theaters with
recorded movie schedules (found on hollywood.com), and to the time announcement (202-762-1401), and my home phone, and also placed calls from my home phone to Magic Jack.
Out of 183 calls placed, 107 (58%) had good quality audio, and 76 (42%) had very poor unusable audio, or did not connect at all. There was no in between; either the call started out clear and remained clear, or was poor from the beginning. Same
success rate on the Toshiba and Emachines. Sometimes, if a call was poor, if I hung up and placed a call to the same number a few seconds later, it would connect properly.
It seemed that on Tuesday, the unacceptable calls had choppy pulsating audio. On Wednesday, the unacceptable calls did not connect at all, or you could hear that the call was answered, and you could hear one second of the recording, then the line went dead.
Of the 28 calls I placed from my home phone to Magic Jack, all 28 rang. Of these, 16 had good quality, and 12 were poor
quality. Sometimes things said on the magic Jack phone were heard on the other end, but could not hear things said from the home phone on Magic Jack.
I doubt that there is any problem with my equipment, since I can get good calls sometimes, at random. Most likely problems in the Magic Jack switching system.
Is this what people have experienced the past few days?
Seems like a promising product, but not very reliable at this time.

SpamBox · Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 4:12 am Post subject:

I just got my Mj just a couple of days ago and have noticed the same thing, though I haven't kept any logs. But your percentage sounds about right (of course with MJ wait a few minutes and your percentage might sound wrong - that's a joke....I know...not very good)

Well it is still a beta product. Though you would think they wouldn't be running infomercials on it until they had everything squared away.

testing123 · Dan Should Pay Me Joined: 13 Nov 2007 Posts: 703

Good detail johnr, for some reason it seemed like it was particularly bad connectivity this week -- I don't think it is our (User) side of the equation based on the number of postings here.

This reliability issue needs to be addressed for the product to really get out of the "Beta" classification, IMHO.

Unfortunately, it seems like I have to pray as I call, hoping that I get a good connect; sort of a "roll of the dice"