Problems

[Paula7928]

First of all I love the fact that with Majic Jack I have no monthly phone bill for my office. I have these problems which are causing problems for my business and I am about to throw in the towel and try Skype In. If anyone knows of a fix please let me know. I would prefer to keep the MJ which I have connected to an AC powered hub.

1) Any call over 30 minutes will be dropped guaranteed. I frequently have hour long conference calls with my clients and on a call this long the call is always dropped at least once. What happens is that I will be talking and can no longer hear the other person, just silence. today on an hour and 20 minute call the call was dropped twice (about every 30 minutes) and then I finally switched to my cell phone.

2) At least once a day when I pick up the phone to make a call I hear the other person answer and then I can hear them but they cannot hear me. More likely to happen in the afternoon than in the morning. It seems like this has not happened in about the last week.

3) Beeps - sometimes you hear beeps and then they stop.

4) Sometimes the calls will fade out for a second, similar to a cell phone.

Thanks for any help anyone can give.

I am using a HP desktop computer with Windows Vista and a DSL connection through Verizon.

[tsmith]

Paula I honestly wouldn't trust using a magicJack for important business calls. The problems you're describing can be the result of a number of things, such as variations in your Internet upload/download speeds, time of day (afternoons and evenings are typically heavily used by others who share that DSL service provider, such as kids for gaming, etc., in your area), other processes being run in your PC that can take valuable resources away from your magicJack process, causing slowness in CPU processing and so on.

You could try Ctl+Alt+Delete to bring up the Task Manager, and then change the priority of the magicJack process (magicJack.exe) to either "Above Normal" or "High" to see if that makes a difference, but that's only one thing to try. You could also download a free "process leveling" software call Process Lasso (which I use). And, you could bring up the Task Manager to delete certain process you deem unnecessary during this time of "experimentation", to see if any of this makes a difference in your calls.

The beeps are a well known documented problem mentioned numerous times in this forum. Usually caused by the female voice mimicking certain tones your magicJack thinks are being generated by dialing a number (DTMF tones). Haven't heard much about it recently though.

I use my magicJack for business calls but have to resort to my land line every so often after getting varied results during certain parts of the day. It's great for non-critical calls where patience may be needed from time to time, but not business calls where your reputation is on the line. Just my .02.

[Paula7928]

tsmith - thanks so much for your reply. I was starting to think that myself - but I love to save money!

I have used Skype on my laptop while travelling with good success so I might try Skype In and then if I still have problems I'll break down and pay the phone company $40 a month for a land line.

[tsmith]

Not a bad idea Paula. I edited my reply to include some ideas to try if you want to see if you can relieve some of these problems. Otherwise Skype would definitely be worth considering.

[Paula7928]

Thanks Tom. I'll try your suggestions and see if it will help.