magicJack Set To Become My Primary Home Telephone Service

[lcompton]

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED TO DSL REPORTS ON 31 MAY 2008


Good afternoon.

I've been posting my experiences with magicJack on DSL Reports (a.k.a. Broadband Reports) and I've been asked to post my ongoing review of magicJack here at the Unofficial magicJack Forum as well. The original DSL Reports thread can be found here.

So, without further adieu, here are my articles on my magicJack adventure...

BACKGROUND
magicJack has been running for about three weeks now on a Hewlett Packard T5710 Thin Client (setup as a dedicated magicJack telephony server). Overall, I am pleased with magicJack's performance.

Over the past couple of weeks I have updated my telephone number with friends and organizations with whom I do business and my calls now come through my magicJack. My Verizon service is essentially unused at this point.

Today I integrated the magicJack and telephony server into my central home telephone system and demoted the Verizon telephone service to one phone with no answering machine. This coming week, I will be canceling my Verizon home telephone service and reallocating the money saved by eliminating the telephone service to increase my Verizon broadband Internet connection rate. I've done a bit of analysis on the economics of this decision and I'll share my results here in case anyone else is weighing this strategy.

STRATEGY & ANALYSIS
First, let me take a moment to describe the level of Verizon telephone service that I have. The plan was Verizon's unlimited local calling service with no enhanced calling features of any kind. I had no long distance service on my Verizon telephone line and toll calls were about thirty cents/minute. Toll and long distance calls were handled through OneSuite at 2.5 cents/minute. I accessed OneSuite through a local access telephone number, which leveraged my unlimited local calling service through Verizon. This Verizon telephone service plan cost me approximately USD25.00/month. OneSuite toll/long-distance minutes were purchased in blocks of USD10.00 and good for six months before I would have to spend an additional USD10.00 to purchase more minutes and reactivate any remaining minutes I had from my previous purchases. So, at 2.5 cents/minute, I was spending about USD20.00/annum for 800 toll/long-distance minutes/annum. As you can see, I don't make a lot of toll/long-distance telephone calls.

So, using the numbers above, I was spending USD300.00/annum for Verizon basic telephone service with unlimited local calling. An additional USD20.00/annum purchased 800 toll/long-distance minutes to meet my needs. My total annual cost for telephony services was USD320.00.

Using the magicJack strategy, I now have:

• Unlimited local and toll/long-distance calling,
• Call forwarding,
• Caller ID,
• Call waiting w/Caller ID,
• Conference calling,
• Voicemail and
• Voicemails via e-mail as *.WAV files

for an initial capital investment of USD46.90 for the magicJack, which includes the magicJack device and the first year licensing fee at USD39.95 and a shipping and handling charge of USD6.95. An additional capital expense of USD71.00 (USD56.00 for the T5710 and USD15.00 shipping and handling) for the Hewlett Packard T5710 Thin Client was necessary in order to achieve 7 x 24 telephony service at home using a dedicated P.C. (without leaving a laptop or standard desktop computer on all of the time.) The Thin Client was won in an eBay auction making the cost of this hardware asset unpredictable. Because magicJack provides a POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) line interface, I am able to re-use my telephone equipment with magicJack. My total capital investment for my magicJack setup was USD117.90. The recurring cost for magicJack is USD19.95/annum at current market rates. Alternatively, there is a one-time reduced-rate option presently available to me at USD59.95 for a four-year license extension, which works out to just about USD14.99/annum for each of the four years in the extension period.

Earlier I mentioned that I will be reallocating the money saved on my monthly Verizon telephone service to increase my Verizon broadband Internet service rate. Let's have a closer look at this now. My present Verizon Internet access is their so-called Verizon DSL Starter Plan at USD14.95/month. The DSL Starter Plan provides data rates of 768Kbps downstream and 132Kbps upstream. My monthly Internet access cost of USD14.95 combined with the aforementioned USD25.00/month for my Verizon basic unlimited local calling telephone service results in a total monthly expense of about USD40.00. Dropping the USD25.00/month telephone service should reduce my monthly Verizon expense to USD14.95, but it doesn't. Let's see why...

Verizon, just like Comcast (and probably anyone else offering broadband these days), sticks it to customers who purchase broadband only. Without Verizon telephone service, my DSL Starter Plan monthly rate goes to USD29.95/month thereby reducing my monthly savings from USD25.00 to USD10.00. Verizon's next step up in DSL service is their Power Plan providing 3Mbps downstream and 768Kbps upstream. The DSL Power Plan rings in at USD39.99/month without Verizon telephone service. (As an aside, Verizon calls DSL service without their telephone service a dry loop connection.) By upgrading to the DSL Power Plan service, I will effectively wipe out any dollar savings I might have been able to realize with magicJack. But, here's the interesting thing. For the same amount of money each month (not counting magicJack's negligible USD19.95/annum licensing fee, which is canceled out by the elimination of the USD20.00/annum toll and long-distance minutes I used to purchase through OneSuite), I will have increased my broadband Internet service connection rate, telephone calling features and gained unlimited toll and long-distance calling for the same amount of money I have been paying each month. This actually works out to be a good value.

CONSIDERATIONS
There are some considerations for anyone contemplating magicJack as a land-line replacement. Let's look at these now.

1. magicJack telephone service is not Verizon telephone service. There is a difference in call quality and service reliability. In my case, magicJack functions at least as well as my wireless telephone. So, I can live with it.
2. magicJack voicemail is unreliable. I find that magicJack voicemail only picks up about 65% of the time. You can use an answering machine instead of magicJack's voicemail. However, this could prove to be a nuisance since the answering machine will need to be set to its two rings setting in order to answer the incoming calls. The four ring setting may not catch the magicJack calls since magicJack voicemail is hard-coded to intercept calls after four rings. This also makes the toll-saver setting that many answering machines have unuseable. (NOTE: I am presently studying the magicJack voicemail issue to better understand what may be causing the unreliability.)
3. Setting up magicJack on the Hewlett Packard T5710 Thin Client is not for the faint-of-heart. My professional background includes 20 years of information technology experience in networking, telecommunications and server infrastructure. The magicJack effort was my first experience with a Thin Client and I drew heavily on my professonal and personal "geek" experience to get the magicJack/Thin Client combination up and running. In fact, I cannot honestly say that it would have ever occurred to me to try changing the USB port driver had it not been for HolmanGT's post on this issue. That was an excellent discovery on his part and he has my sincerest respect for catching that. In any case, I've been through the Thin Client setup (from scratch) three times now (not all by choice either) and it is certainly less mysterious to me now than it was five weeks ago.
4. magicJack has zero effective support. If you have problems with your magicJack or the magicJack telephony service, you would do best to resign yourself to the idea that you will wait until "they" (i.e. the magicJack folks) fix the issue (see my review of Verizon's DSL service on DSL Reports for more on this concept). The support is abysmal and you should expect nothing in order to avoid being disappointed. In my case, I rely on my own geekiness to get me through the tough spots.
5. If you decide to replace your land-line telephone service with magicJack, kiss your land-line telephone number a teary good-bye. In response to my chat inquiry regarding telephone number portability availability, the magicJack representative said it would be available in the next several months -- whatever that means. To me, it means no. So, after nearly 17 years with the same Verizon (well, it was Bell of Pennsylvania back then) telephone number, I am saying good-bye to my old number. I didn't believe I was going to miss it, but somehow, I will. Oh well, at least I won't be getting calls from old boyfriends. This might not be so bad after all. I digress...
6. magicJack's terms of service are aggressively designed to facilitate an advertising-supported business model. It is shocking to me that most Americans don't read terms of service agreements, but the sad truth is we don't. A more thorough commentary on the terms of service is beyond the scope of this article. However, I am considering a future article on magicJack's terms of service to help people better understand the impact of the terms on personal privacy. If this is something that you would like to see, do let me know. The business precedent for magicJack's business model, as it turns out, is Juno (no, not the movie) e-mail (for those of you that have been around awhile.) Juno's early business model (circa late 1990s) was advertising-supported free Internet e-mail. Juno provided customers a dialer and dial-up access and a proprietary e-mail client that allowed e-mail-only Internet dial-up and downloaded advertisements to the client computer during dial-up e-mail sessions. Juno is still around today, but the advertisement-supported e-mail business model turned out to be unsustainable over time. Juno merged with NetZero in 2001 and broadened their portfolio of services to drive revenue harder and subsidize the unprofitable advertisement-supported e-mail-only dial-up service. Times are very different today and telephony has become a highly commoditized service. magicJack may experience more success with the advertisment-supported service model depending upon how they structure their advertising channels (e.g. softphone client e-advertisements vs. selling our magicJack telephone numbers).
7. You should NOT replace your existing land-line telephone service with magicJack unless you have a wireless telephone on which you can rely as a back-up in the event magicJack telephone service is unavailable. In my case, I have T-Mobile and I happen to enjoy excellent wireless signal strength at home. So, if I need telephone service in an emergency, I can use my wireless telephone in the event magicJack is unavailable.
8. magicJack does not work with a fax machine. This is outlined in magicJack's terms of service. Unfortunately, this is a bit of a pain for me. I do send a couple of faxes each month and I have worked out an alternate arrangement where I can scan the documents and e-mail the images to the folks to whom I need to send them. If you absolutely have to have inbound and outbound fax capability, you will need to keep your land-line service or make other arrangements.
9. I was going to write something here about magicJack's 911 service, but then it occurred to me that I couldn't care less about 911 service. I don't use 911 and I would be perfectly happy not to have 911 service. That's just my opinion, of course. (Please don't send me a bunch of e-mails telling me how great 911 service is. Believe it or not, there was a time before 911 service and somehow we managed to get through it. Well, I did anyway.) When I was a kid we had the telephone numbers of the police and fire departments and ambulance service right next to the telephone and we didn't have to pay a bunch of money each month for it either. Anyway, if 911 service is important to you then you should probably test your magicJack by dialing 911 and verifying that your address is appearing correctly to the 911 operator before assuming that this feature is functioning correctly.

CONCLUSION
I'm excited about trying out magicJack as my home telephone service. I view this as an experiment and it's kind of fun. In the final analysis, if magicJack doesn't survive, I can always get land-line service again if I want it.

I'll report on here from time-to-time to provide updates on my magicJack telephone service experience.

I'm considering producing a video on building a dedicated magicJack telephony server using the Hewlett Packard T5710 Thin Client and a magicJack. It's a pretty significant undertaking and I haven't quite talked myself into it just yet.

Thank you for reading this article.

Do have a lovely day.

Lisa

[lcompton]

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED TO DSL REPORTS ON 6 JUNE 2008


Good evening.

There are a number of updates to provide regarding my magicJack adventure and this seems to be a good time to provide an interim article on the status of my effort to replace my Verizon land-line telephone service with magicJack.

VERIZON ORDER STATUS UPDATE
On Monday, 2 June, I called Verizon to cancel my Verizon land-line telephone service and increase the connection rate of my DSL service from 768Kbps downstream and 132kbps upstream (Verizon's DSL Starter Plan) to 3Mbps downsteam and 768Kbps upstream (Verizon's DSL Power Plan). I decided it would be a good test to try placing my order using magicJack.

The Verizon representative with whom I ended up speaking seemed to have a good grasp on the dry loop concept and, after a brief attempt at trying to convince me to keep my telephone service and upsell services to me, agreed to cancel my telephone service and place an order to increase my broadband Internet connection rate. I was mildly amused when the representative began to tell me about the unreliability of voice-over-IP. I thought to myself, if only the representative realized that I was on a voice-over-IP connection right now. The Verizon representative asked me if I was going with Vonage and I replied no. Then she asked me what voice-over-IP service I was planning to use and I said that I was going with a free service that requires a USD20.00/annum licensing fee. I did not tell the representative it was magicJack.

The representative advised me that my broadband Internet cost would increase as a result of not having Verizon telephone service and I advised the representative that I was aware of this information and that I had called a few weeks ago and been told that the DSL Power Plan would cost USD39.99/month. The representative told me that I had been misinformed and that the monthly rate for the DSL Power Plan would be USD41.99/month. (It's times like these that I really have to expend a lot of effort to bite my tongue.) Anyway, I explained to the representative that I was unhappy with what seemed like a bait and switch tactic. The representative was clearly uninterested in my protest and would have been more than happy to have me cancel the order. Realizing that the only other game in town is Comcast at USD57.95/month, I reluctantly accepted the USD41.99/month DSL Power Plan cost. (I realize it's only a USD2.00 difference from what I had been previously advised, but it's very annoying none-the-less.)

After the order was placed, the Verizon representative advised me that everything would be completed by 1800 EDT that evening (2 June). Now, here's the interesting thing... My Uniden cordless telephones automatically time all of my calls. When I hung up with Verizon, I had been on the telephone for 57 minutes and 59 seconds. This call was nearly one hour using magicJack and not a single problem. I was quite pleased.

As for Verizon, Well, my telephone service wasn't disconnected until sometime early Thursday morning (5 June) and my DSL broadband service still hasn't been upgraded to the Power Plan connection rate. (For the disbelievers among us, feel free to call my old Verizon telephone number. It was (610) 363-0499. It was an unlisted number so if you perform a reverse look-up on it you won't get any hits.) Curiously, when I call my old Verizon telephone number from magicJack, I get a ring-no-answer. Calling my old number from my T-Mobile wireless results in the familiar disconnected number recording.

Today I called Verizon in an attempt to learn the prognosis of my broadband connection rate increase and I was surprised to learn that the order has a service-ready date of 12 June, which is next Thursday. Bummer. I'm disappointed that Verizon didn't communicate this to me. I received only one e-mail from Verizon shortly after I placed my original order on 2 June and here is what it said:

Dear Valued Verizon Online Member,

This message is to confirm your order to disconnect your Verizon local service. So that you may continue your broadband service, your previous Verizon High Speed Internet account on 6103630499 has been converted to a new Verizon High Speed Internet account over a dedicated data line with no voice service. We call this service, "Verizon High Speed Internet without local service". Your email address and settings and other aspects of your account (like your portal selection) will not be affected by this change.

If you are still within an annual commitment period, your annual term will restart. Customers on a monthly plan or who have completed their annual plan term will remain as month-to-month plan customers.

Important!
Once this order is processed (generally within 5 days or longer if you requested a later date), you will receive a communication with your Verizon High Speed Internet without local service Dedicated Data Line Number.

Prior to receiving this communication:

• You can use your Verizon High Speed Internet service without interruption.
• You will be billed for all phone calls made during the transition period.

After the switch:

• You will still enjoy the full benefits of your Verizon High Speed Internet service
• You will no longer be able to make or receive telephone calls on your new dedicated data line, which will be limited to providing high-speed Internet service only
• Your Verizon High Speed Internet service will be billed separately from any voice service
• Your line will no longer qualify for Verizon bundle or package pricing
• Traditional 911 or E911 access to emergency services are not available over the dedicated data line (Except for VT where access to emergency services is legally required to be made available)
• Your line will no longer qualify for Directory Listing services
• Operator Assistance and 411 services are not available
• Call Referral Service is not available

Access all your account information online at http://www.verizon.net/myaccount.

If you have any questions or need to make any changes to your order, please call us at 1-800-567-6789. (Be sure to choose "DSL" if asked which Verizon Online service you ordered.)

Thank you for choosing Verizon Online! Your business is important to us.

Sincerely,

Verizon Online
Customer Care Team

Verizon, one of the nation's leading providers of high-speed Internet services, has created one of the best overall values in broadband today, with speed and great service at a very affordable price.

This message was sent from a notification-only e-mail address that cannot accept incoming e-mail messages. Please do not reply. Copyright 2007 Verizon. All Rights Reserved.

OTHER MAGICJACK OBSERVATIONS FOR THE WEEK

1. Today I had an opportunity to try magicJack on a business call. I was working from home and dialed into a conference bridge through magicJack. I confess that I was a bit apprehensive about using magicJack on a business call, but it had to be done in order to put magicJack through its paces. The business call lasted 25 minutes and magicJack performed nearly flawlessly. No one on the call commented on the quality of my call, which tells me it was acceptable enough for people not to notice anything different from all of the other times I've called into the conference bridge with my Verizon land-line. The one problem that I did discover with magicJack is that it won't let me dial PIN codes using the touch tone keys on the telephone keypad. The touch tones don't seem to be recognized by the conference bridge service. Interestingly, if I programmed the digits into a speed dial location and then initiated the speed dial key to feed the digits into the conference bridge, the touch tone digits were recognized by the conference bridge. I was also able to confirm that dialing the digits using the softphone client on the dedicated telephony server successfully fed the touch tone digits to the conference bridge. This is a minor inconvenience that I hope magicJack will correct in a subsequent software update.
2. I've discovered that my magicJack seems to like to be re-initialized (re-started) periodically. I'm not certain how often this re-initialization is indicated, but I'm going to keep track of the frequency to get a better handle on this phenomenon. If necessary, I can automate periodic reboots of the dedicated magicJack telephony server. The specific symptoms that I have observed that seemed to be corrected by a magicJack re-initialization are:
   1. Calls seem to take longer to connect and
   2. Some calls never seem to connect; i.e. after dialing, the call stays in a dead air state indefinitely.

That's about it for now.

Thank you for reading this article.

Do have a lovely day!

Lisa

[lcompton]

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED TO DSL REPORTS ON 8 JUNE 2008


Good afternoon.

This is simply a minor update on my magicJack supporting infrastructure.

Today, I decided to do something that I've been wanting to do for several years now. magicJack gave me the last little nudge to take the step and purchase an uninterruptable power supply (UPS) for my network. So, I wandered over to Office Depot and picked up a 1.5Kw APC Back-UPS XS.

Connected to the UPS are the Hewlett Packard T5710 Thin Client, Westell 6100 DSL Modem/Router, Linksys WRT54G Wireless Router and Uniden DCT6485 Cordless Telephone System. The UPS is seriously over-specified for this equipment load, which means I can probably run the equipment for about one day in the even of a power failure. In fact, the equipment doesn't even register on the UPS' front panel load meter, which is pretty funny. As an added bonus, my laptops will also have Internet access in the event of a power failure.

Power failures here in Exton don't occur often, but when they do they fall into two categories; very brief or very long. In July 2006 (or was it August, I don't recall now) we had a band of thunderstorms roll through this region that took out my power for three days. It wasn't any fun either. By the third day, even my Verizon telephone service was dead. When PECO (our regional electric and gas company) restored power, I had DSL service, but no telephone. How ironic is that?!

Anyway, the UPS is charging at the moment and the instructions state that it will take 16 hours. When it's fully charged, I'll run a simulation and advise how long the equipment stayed operational.

Thank you,

Lisa

P.S. Has anyone else forgotten for a moment that you actually don't have regular land-line telephone service anymore when you go to use magicJack? This happened to me a couple of times this weekend. It's the dial tone. I pick up a phone in my home and hear the dial tone and immediately my brain is in Verizon mode. Too funny.

[new yorker]

Thank you for your posts. I find your "journey" and the info fascinating!

FYI, your post June 8th: I use my mJack both at home on Long Island and in my office in NY City. In both cases I do not experience a problem with dialing a PIN on the phone keypad or via the softphone; and I do not experience any dead lines as you describe in 2.b. I do not use a "thin client" (don't even know what it is). In my office, my internet connection is via their network and T-3; at home via Cablevision and thru my Linksys wireless router (you should know that we also have Vonage at home - no landlines whatsoever - so that is also via Cablevision and router).

As to hardware, I use an old Trimline corded phone! I loaned my mJ to my boss during his business trip to the Middle East and found his calls back to our NY office were as clear as if he was in the next room. When I asked what he was using, he said it was a special headphone. When he returned and I curiously asked about the "special headphone" he chuckled as he pullled the Trimline out of his briefcase. So I inherited the "special headphone"

Please keep up the good work. If you do, indeed, decide to do your video, I will certainly be one of your viewers!

[new yorker]

Thank you for your posts. I find your "journey" and the info fascinating!

FYI, your post June 8th: I use my mJack both at home on Long Island and in my office in NY City. In both cases I do not experience a problem with dialing a PIN on the phone keypad or via the softphone; and I do not experience any dead lines as you describe in 2.b. I do not use a "thin client" (don't even know what it is). In my office, my internet connection is via their network and T-3; at home via Cablevision and thru my Linksys wireless router (you should know that we also have Vonage at home - no landlines whatsoever - so that is also via Cablevision and router).

As to hardware, I use an old Trimline corded phone! I loaned my mJ to my boss during his business trip to the Middle East and found his calls back to our NY office were as clear as if he was in the next room. When I asked what he was using, he said it was a special headphone. When he returned and I curiously asked about the "special headphone" he chuckled as he pullled the Trimline out of his briefcase. So I inherited the "special headphone"

Please keep up the good work. If you do, indeed, decide to do your video, I will certainly be one of your viewers!

[Taken83oveR]

I give this review a Gold Star, of appreciation. Thanks for taking the time to type all of that.

[Mark]

I canceled my Verizon land line and will use majicJack as my primary phone. Actually, Verizon is suspending my account for 4 months, within which time I'll have an opportunity to decide if I want a final cancellation of the account. If not, I'll notify Verizon and ask that my account be reactivated. Within the 4-month suspension period I will not be billed for telephone service. So for anyone that is apprehensive about canceling their land line, just ask Verizon to cancel telephone service and to have your telephone account suspended for 4 months. If for some reason you're dissatisfied with magicJack you can simply reactivate your Verizon telephone account.

[Darkman90808]

My original purchase of the MJ was strictly *for* business calls. Not necessarily incoming, but to listen in on Webinar conferences since I had my Verizon phone service sans long distance and used either my cell phone or a calling card for these calls. I had no idea "my little bundle of joy" ([sup]TM[/sup] by magicjackjoe) would give me so much fun and occasional consternation. Just like any other kind of love affair.

BTW, lcompton, your avatar is really cute. I'm thinking of using a picture of Tom Cruise for mine. I wonder if he'll mind.

[lcompton]

Thank you for your posts. I find your "journey" and the info fascinating!

FYI, your post June 8th: I use my mJack both at home on Long Island and in my office in NY City. In both cases I do not experience a problem with dialing a PIN on the phone keypad or via the softphone; and I do not experience any dead lines as you describe in 2.b. I do not use a "thin client" (don't even know what it is). In my office, my internet connection is via their network and T-3; at home via Cablevision and thru my Linksys wireless router (you should know that we also have Vonage at home - no landlines whatsoever - so that is also via Cablevision and router).

As to hardware, I use an old Trimline corded phone! I loaned my mJ to my boss during his business trip to the Middle East and found his calls back to our NY office were as clear as if he was in the next room. When I asked what he was using, he said it was a special headphone. When he returned and I curiously asked about the "special headphone" he chuckled as he pullled the Trimline out of his briefcase. So I inherited the "special headphone"

Please keep up the good work. If you do, indeed, decide to do your video, I will certainly be one of your viewers!

Good evening, New Yorker.

I'm pleased that you appreciate my ongoing review of my magicJack experiences. I have another pretty large article to post, but I'm not quite through writing it yet. I'm going try to get it posted by this coming weekend.

Lucky you with your touch tones! Mine still don't function for entering PINs and the like. But, I can live without them for the time being. Supposedly, the touch tone issue was repaired with the latest magicJack software upgrade. However, the upgrade won't function on Thin Clients. So, I'm sticking with an older version of the magicJack software for the time being.

Thank you for writing,

Lisa

[lcompton]

I give this review a Gold Star, of appreciation. Thanks for taking the time to type all of that.

Good evening, Taken83oveR.

Thank you! I'm glad some folks find my ongoing magicJack review helpful. It actually helps me to chronicle my experiences so I can keep my opinions in check. I'll be adding more content soon.

Thank you for writing.

Lisa

[lcompton]

I canceled my Verizon land line and will use majicJack as my primary phone. Actually, Verizon is suspending my account for 4 months, within which time I'll have an opportunity to decide if I want a final cancellation of the account. If not, I'll notify Verizon and ask that my account be reactivated. Within the 4-month suspension period I will not be billed for telephone service. So for anyone that is apprehensive about canceling their land line, just ask Verizon to cancel telephone service and to have your telephone account suspended for 4 months. If for some reason you're dissatisfied with magicJack you can simply reactivate your Verizon telephone account.

Good evening, Mark.

Gosh, it never even occurred to me to try suspending my account. I suppose I kind of knew that I wasn't going to return to my Verizon land-line. The truth is, my land-line service just wasn't a very good value. Besides, dropping telephone service enabled me to upgrade my Internet connection and still have roughly (about USD2.00 more) the same monthly expense. So, I'm glad I did it.

Thank you for writing.

Lisa

[lcompton]

My original purchase of the MJ was strictly *for* business calls. Not necessarily incoming, but to listen in on Webinar conferences since I had my Verizon phone service sans long distance and used either my cell phone or a calling card for these calls. I had no idea "my little bundle of joy" ([sup]TM[/sup] by magicjackjoe) would give me so much fun and occasional consternation. Just like any other kind of love affair.

BTW, lcompton, your avatar is really cute. I'm thinking of using a picture of Tom Cruise for mine. I wonder if he'll mind.

Good evening, Darkman90808.

magicJack has functioned quite well for me thus far. My only complaint is that the Thin Client is not looking like a good long-term viable platform on which to run magicJack. I'll be posting another article later this week with more information.

I'm glad you like my avatar, but it's not an avatar -- it's me. I don't really get the Tom Cruise reference though. Help me understand what my using my own picture as my avatar has to do with you using a picture of Tom Cruise.

Thank you for writing.

Lisa

[lymon]

...Lucky you with your touch tones! Mine still don't function for entering PINs and the like. But, I can live without them for the time being...

Lisa

Hi Lisa, I too am running Magicjack on a thin client T5700 and have no problem using touch tones with the very last MJ update before they made an audio card required. User HolmanGT is graciously providing that last update from his own shared directory.

Prior to installing that update, the touch tones on my MJ would do something so bizarre to my land line voicemail retrieval, that I would be locked out of my voicemail for 15 minutes (YIKES).

Of course YMMV, but it's worth a shot.

[Darkman90808]

I'm glad you like my avatar, but it's not an avatar -- it's me. I don't really get the Tom Cruise reference though. Help me understand what my using my own picture as my avatar has to do with you using a picture of Tom Cruise.

Thank you for writing.

Lisa

Sorry... just my feeble attempt at humor. The Tom Cruise reference dates me. I was just trying to extend a compliment.

[maine-iac]

I'm glad you like my avatar, but it's not an avatar -- it's me. I don't really get the Tom Cruise reference though. Help me understand what my using my own picture as my avatar has to do with you using a picture of Tom Cruise.

Thank you for writing.

Lisa

Sorry... just my feeble attempt at humor. The Tom Cruise reference dates me. I was just trying to extend a compliment.

A woman with brains and looks. I think I'm in love!

[lcompton]

A woman with brains and looks. I think I'm in love!

Good afternoon, maine-iac.

Awww. Thank you. You're a rare breed indeed if you can appreciate an intelligent woman. I find many men don't do so well with intelligent women. I wish there were more like you.

Lisa

[lcompton]

Hi Lisa, I too am running Magicjack on a thin client T5700 and have no problem using touch tones with the very last MJ update before they made an audio card required. User HolmanGT is graciously providing that last update from his own shared directory.

Prior to installing that update, the touch tones on my MJ would do something so bizarre to my land line voicemail retrieval, that I would be locked out of my voicemail for 15 minutes (YIKES).

Of course YMMV, but it's worth a shot.

Good afternoon, lymon.

I was running the correct retrograde magicJack software release 1.73.4153.2910 when I attempted to use the touch tones for entering access codes. It simply didn't function for me until I upgraded to the current 1.80.4263.2980 release. But, at least it's functioning now.

Thank you for writing.

Lisa

[lcompton]

Good afternoon.

Please accept my apologies for my prolonged silence. There are numerous updates indicated based on my experiences with magicJack and my journey to DSL-only service from Verizon. Significant effort has been expended in researching faxing via magicJack and bandwidth consumption as well. Because I have severe restrictions on how much time I can devote to documenting this project, I will comment on all but the faxing and bandwidth considerations in this article.

TO CHARGE OR NOT TO CHARGE
Much has been written about alleged unscrupulous charging practices by magicJack with regard to their 30-day free trial. So, I thought I would weigh in on the issue with the facts of my experience.

I ordered my magicJack on 20 April 2008. Here is a copy of the confirmation e-mail I received from magicJack after placing my order:

Important: Please reply to this email right away if you want any modifications from your order below, so we can ship your magicjack right away. You do not have to take any action if you do not want to make any changes. Please refer all tech questions to the link below when you get your magicJack. Thank you so much and your magicJack is on it's way. Dan Borislow The Inventor

Dear LISA A. COMPTON,

Great News. Your 2008 Product of the Year - magicJack, is on its way to you; get ready to start making Free Local and Long Distance calls and get a Local Phone number for Life.

Free Trial Jacks will not be billed to your credit card until the **30 Day Free Trial expires. We will however place an authorization of one dollar on your credit card (may appear as "pending charge") for the free trial. If you don't love the magicjack (we know you will), simply return it within thirty days - no questions asked.

Order No.: XXXXXXXXX
Reference ID: XXXXXXX
Total magicJacks Ordered: 1

Order Shipping Information

Customer Name: LISA A COMPTON
Address 1: 207 N SEVERGN DR
Address 2:
City, State, Zip: EXTON, PA 19341-1572
Country: United States
Phone#:

Order Summary

Qty Item Description Price Ea Total Price Charge Date
----- -------------------------------------------------- ---------- ------------- -----------
1 30 Day magicJack Trial 39.95 39.95 05/20/2008
1 Shipping & Handling 6.95 6.95 05/20/2008
--------------------------
ORDER TOTAL: $46.90

Your credit card will be charged on or after the
following date(s) for the amounts listed below

Date: 05/20/2008 Charge Amount: $46.90

Important: Please save this email for thirty days as it contains your Order Number

Some useful information:

You may check on the status of your order at any time by clicking here Order Status and entering your email address and order number. For your convenience, these have been included in this link.

For questions regarding technical information click here Technical Chat and a representative will assist you. Please note that this link is specifically for technical issues (not for order/billing information - see above for order/billing inquiries).

**Details of 30 day free trial:

Other considerations related to our 30 Day Free Trial Offer:

1. If you purchased 3 or more magicJacks, your card will be billed upon order fulfillment.
2. If you used PayPal for your magicJack order, PayPal will charge your credit card on the date of purchase.

Congratulations, enjoy your savings.

Yours truly,

magicJack

Sure enough, magicJack kept their word and charged my American Express Card on 20 May 2008, which is exactly 30 days after the order date of 20 April 2008. Here is the charge as it appears on my American Express Card statement:



As an aside, I ordered my magicJack on a Sunday and received it the following Wednesday, which works out to three days. I'm certainly glad I didn't order any of the expedited shipping services.

THE INTERNET CONNECTON UPGRADE
On 12 June, Verizon completed the upgrade of my DSL service from their so-called DSL Starter Plan to their DSL Power Plan. The bandwidth migration was from 768Kbps downstream/132Kbps upstream to 3Mbps downstream/768Kbps upstream. Here are the results of some speed tests performed before (Figure 1) and after (Figure 2) the upgrade:


Figure 1



Figure 2

Both tests were performed between my residence in Exton, Pennsylvania and Speakeasy's New York City servers.

The increase in broadband connection rate has had no noticeable impact on magicJack performance, which is as it should be. The DSL Starter Plan bandwidth was sufficient to meet magicJack's requirements. From a more general Internet experience, the DSL upgrade has been rather pleasant. It is certainly closer to true broadband than the DSL Starter Plan ever was (see my review of Verizon DSL Starter Plan on DSL Reports.)

Verizon completed the order with the following e-mail sent four days after the DSL upgrade was implemented:

Dear Valued Verizon Online Member,

Your Verizon Online DSL account has been converted.

Your order to disconnect your Verizon local service and change your Verizon Online DSL account to a dedicated data line with no voice service is now complete.

Per your request, your Verizon Online DSL without local service dedicated data line XXXXXXXXXX is limited to just DSL high-speed Internet access service. Your new monthly rate for this service is $ 41.99.

In the future, if you ever decide to add Verizon voice service back to this line, please call us at 1-800-567-6789.

As a reminder, you will be billed for your DSL service charges separately. Any discounts you may have been receiving as a result of bundling Verizon Online DSL with other Verizon communication services together will no longer apply. Access all your account information and view your bill online at www.verizon.net/myaccount.

Your use of or payment for Verizon Online DSL without local service constitutes your acceptance of and agreement to your new service monthly rate and the Verizon terms of service that can be found by clicking on Verizon Internet Access Terms of Service. If you do not agree with the new monthly rate applicable to your DSL without local service or the terms and conditions, do not use the service and immediately call Verizon at 1-800-567-6789 to cancel your DSL service.

If you have any questions or need further assistance, please call us at 1-800-567-6789.

Thank you for choosing Verizon Online DSL. We appreciate your continued business.

Sincerely,

Verizon Online
Broadband Customer Care Team

Verizon, one of the nation's leading providers of high-speed Internet services, has created one of the best overall values in broadband today, with speed, content and great service at a very affordable price.

This message was sent from a notification-only e-mail address that cannot accept incoming e-mail messages. Please do not reply. Copyright 2007 Verizon. All Rights Reserved.

11 JUNE 2008, A DAY THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY
On 11 June 2008, magicJack decided to begin pushing out a magicJack software upgrade that effectively broke magicJack compatibility with the Hewlett Packard T5710 Thin Client. The software upgrade was retrieved during a magicJack restart, which could be initiated any number of ways by the end-user. I was aching to try the upgrade so I decided to initiate my upgrade by manually triggering a restart through magicJack's menu options. After the upgrade completed, I received an on-screen dialog box error stating that no audio devices could be found. At first, I thought my RCON client connection was configured incorrectly because this was the exact same error I received when I originally setup RCON access to the Thin Client. At that time, it was because the RCON client was configured to bring audio to the local (client) computer (as opposed to leaving audio I/O on the Thin Client (host) computer.) Alas, the no-audio-device error was not the result of RCON client configuration. At this point, I knew I was in trouble...

I started trying a few experiments to see if I could figure out why the upgrade broke Thin Client-magicJack compatibility to no avail. (This would be so much easier if magicJack would issue decent release notes with their upgrades.) Someone posted instructions on the Unofficial magicJack Forum describing a process to revert the magicJack software upgrade back to the previous version, which was functioning with the Thin Client. So, preferring to have a working home telephone system over spending hours experimenting with the upgrade trying to identify what was causing the incompatibility, I decided to perform the retrograde, which did not go well at first. I would later learn on the morning of 12 June that the attempt at retrograding the software failed at first because of an availability issue with magicJack's servers. The retrograde performed successfully on the morning of 12 June 2008.

It seems to me that it would have made more sense for magicJack to release their software upgrade on Friday, 13 June. At least then the entire episode would have been funny...

In order to prevent the magicJack from automatically upgrading itself at some point, a statement was required in the hosts file, which would effectively prevent the magicJack from finding the upgrade server during upgrade polling events.

Generally speaking, the retrograded magicJack performed reasonably well. For one thing, there was no 911 information banner appearing at the bottom of the softphone, which was truly a delight. It got me thinking how nice it would be if one could opt-out of 911 service. Some folks on the Unofficial magicJack forum were claiming that the ability to enter touch tones for PINs and access codes had been corrected after retrograding the software upgrade leading them to believe that magicJack had made some changes on their servers to correct this issue. I cannot confirm this. After the retrograde, I was still unable to use touch tones for entering access codes. In the interest of clarification, this is a good place to state that the retrograded magicJack software release running on my Thin Client was 1.73.4153.2910. Fortunately, I had downloaded this release from magicJack's web-site several weeks before they released their software upgrade.

My initial instincts were that magicJack had broken hardware compatibility with the Thin Client's audio sub-system. It would later turn out that this observation was only slightly accurate at best. In fact, magicJack appears to have switched the method used to access the host computer's audio sub-system from going through the operating system to direct, hardware-level, access. I'll spare the reader a history lesson of direct access to system hardware and simply redirect the reader to Wikipedia's article on DirectX, which does a decent job of explaining why direct hardware access was developed by Microsoft as well as DirectX's evolution since it's inception nearly 13 years ago.

HolmanGT states that he confirmed magicJack's requirement for DirectX directly with magicJack's technical support.

Software developers typically prefer direct access to system hardware to gain better control of I/O and superior application performance; neither of which is obtainable when accessing system I/O through the host operating system. It is reasonable that magicJack recognized that they could improve the performance of the magicJack when using a headset/microphone combination through the host computer's audio sub-system by accessing the audio hardware directly rather than relying on the O/S I/O for access to the audio device. Interestingly, DirectX device access can improve host computer performance by not taxing the O/S with hardware device I/O operations.

THE UPGRADE
Deciding that it would be interesting to give DirectX a try, I decided to have a go at installing DirectX on my Thin Client. But, there was a wrinkle. DirectX requires a 512MB flash ROM/512MB RAM Thin Client in order to be installed. Unfortunately, my Thin Client had only 256MB flash ROM/256MB RAM. This is where having access to the Unofficial magicJack Forum's Tips, Tricks and Hacks section really came in handy. This particular area requires visitors to have a login in order to access the content. In this area I was able to find information on sources for Thin Client ROM and RAM upgrades. So, I ordered a 512MB flash ROM module from Transcend for USD20.80 (plus USD5.00 shipping and handling.) I also ordered a 512MB RAM module from PC Memory Store for USD25.75 (plus USD4.99 shipping and handling). The total for all upgrades was USD56.54. It took one week to receive both parts.

Installing the new hardware took about 30 minutes, which includes time spent reading the T5000 Hardware Reference Guide explaining how to perform the hardware upgrades. One thing about the flash ROM module upgrade is that it has a blue LED directly on the circuit board that illuminates when the module is powered on. The Thin Client now emanates a lovely blue hue through the Thin Client air vents, which looks very pretty when the lights are off. After the hardware upgrade was completed, I proceeded to re-flash the Thin Client from scratch. This involved using the master O/S ROM flash image and then removing the following components:

• .NET Messenger
• Citrix ICA Client
• HP Session Allocation Manager
• Sygate Security Agent
• TeemNT
• Windows Media Player

After these components were removed, I made my usual regional customizations, reconfigured the Remote Procedure Call server to enable automatic time updates, and setup RCON host access.

DirectX installed flawlessly. As this was my fourth time configuring this Thin Client from scratch, I decided to get a little smarter and build a flash image with the configuration just the way I like it. I purchased three 2GB USB flash drives from Woot! about two weeks ago and one of them will be a dedicated emergency recovery flash drive for the Thin Client. Very handy. If I need to make future changes, it will save all of the time spent adding/removing/configuring things over and over again.

All of the informational resources for the Hewlett Packard T5710 Thin Client can be found here. This is your starting point for all information and software resources related to the T5710 Thin Client.

Upon plugging in the magicJack and manually starting the application, the upgrade process began. Within about 90 seconds, magicJack was up and running and ready to call. Most importantly, the no-audio-device-found error was no longer displayed. Yay! The version of magicJack software presently running on my Thin Client is 1.80.4263.2980.

The two things that I've noticed with the upgrade is that touch tones now function satisfactorily when entering access codes. Yay! Unfortunately, the 911 banner is back. Oh well, at least I'm not paying for 911 anymore.

CONCLUSION
Sometime in March 2008, magicJack began shipping a new version of the magicJack device, which was incompatible with the T5710 Thin Client's default USB interface driver. It was necessary to change the USB device configuration in order to get magicJack to function. This month, magicJack released a software upgrade that broke compatibility with the T5710 Thin Client requiring DirectX to be installed. For me, the Thin Client is proving to be a high-maintenance solution, which I find undesirable. No one can say whether or not future magicJack upgrades will break Thin Client-magicJack compatibility. For those of us that desire reliable 7 x 24 telephony without wanting a lot of computer drama each time a magicJack upgrade is released, the Thin Client is most probably not the best solution.

My next steps are to procure an inexpensive laptop to use as a magicJack platform. The laptop I am going to source only needs to be a Windows XP machine. My budget is USD100.00 (including shipping), which should be achievable if I purchase an older laptop with a broken display and/or keyboard. The hard drive can be replaced with a solid-state device and the power settings can be set to minimize the on-time of the laptop's internal fan. Using Craig's List, eBay and Freecycle, I am optimistic that I'll be able to source a laptop within my budget (well, Freecycle would be no cost ). The idea behind this strategy is that I will be significantly reducing the likelihood of future incompatibilities between the magicJack and the host computer, which means less computer drama.

Once I switch my magicJack to a dedicated laptop, my upgraded Thin Client will find its way to eBay, which will help me recover some of my investment.

The important thing to recognize here is that if you decide to purchase a Thin Client, the available evidence is that you are more likely to encounter system compatibility issues with each magicJack software upgrade than you would running a magicJack on a full-blown computer with a normal release of Windows. If you don't mind fooling with the Thin Client and trying to solve the issues (assuming that they can be solved) as they arise, then the Thin Client may just work for you.

In closing, I wish to express my appreciation to the many folks who have researched the latest compatibility issue ultimately uncovering the correct answer to get the current release of the magicJack software functioning satisfactorily with Thin Clients. Excellent work, folks.

As always, thank you for reading this article.

Lisa

[laserjobs]

Thanks Lisa, you are an amazing writer and I really appreciate your involvement here. Keep us updated

[dwimmer38]

I don't know about you guys the but Magic Jack was the only reason I purchased an HP thin client. The thin client seems to be the best solution for someone like myself who is cheap when it comes to electricity use. I think we should email Dan and let him know that many people use the thin client and suggest that he make sure all future upgrades are compatible.

[AlaninKY]

Lisa your postings have been excellent. I noticed from reading the postings about the Thin Clients is they encounter system compatibility issues too much. I rather pass on trying Thin Clients as I don't want to experience the hassle of each magicJack update being an adventure with a Thin client.

[lcompton]

Thanks Lisa, you are an amazing writer and I really appreciate your involvement here. Keep us updated

Good evening, laserjobs.

I appreciate your feedback. I'm sort of surprised anyone actually reads my articles. But, I am certainly glad that there are some who appreciate the effort.

You can bet that I'll continue my ongoing review. I'm already working on my next article.

Thank you for writing!

Lisa

[lcompton]

Lisa your postings have been excellent. I noticed from reading the postings about the Thin Clients is they encounter system compatibility issues too much. I rather pass on trying Thin Clients as I don't want to experience the hassle of each magicJack update being an adventure with a Thin client.

Good evening, AlaninKY.

(Okay, I have to ask, does your user ID mean, "Alan in Kentucky"?)

I'm pleased to learn that you appreciate the articles I've written.

The Thin Client solution is certainly more challenging than a regular P.C. When I received my magicJack I first tried it out on my desktop P.C. (while I was trying to figure out how the heck to make magicJack work on my Thin Client.) On my desktop, magicJack loaded in a snap. I completed the registration, which took about 30 minutes because I actually read the terms of service, and was able to make and receive calls right away.

The Thin Client is simply an uncertain future as a platform for magicJack -- hence, my strategy of purchasing a broken laptop to use instead.

Thank you for writing!

Lisa

[AlaninKY]

Good evening, AlaninKY.

(Okay, I have to ask, does your user ID mean, "Alan in Kentucky"?)

Lisa

Hi Lisa!

My user ID does mean Alan in Kentucky.

[magicjackjoe]

Lisa - you are living proof that "the best man for the job is a woman" - keep posting.

[lcompton]

Lisa - you are living proof that "the best man for the job is a woman" - keep posting.

Good evening, magicjackjoe.

ROFL

I think you just made 99% of the guys in this forum cringe.

Thank you for the compliment!

I have another lengthy review on the way too.

Do have a lovely evening!

Lisa

[free2talk]

Hi Lisa,
I have read your posts with great interest.Excellent stuff.

I have a question regarding ways to access the thin client .I have bought a t5700 and do not have a keyboard
to access it.How can i access it remotely using my laptop ? ( I do have a spare monitor though)
Do I have to install the remote software on the thin client or on my laptop.

Thanks.

[lcompton]

Hi Lisa,
I have read your posts with great interest.Excellent stuff.

I have a question regarding ways to access the thin client .I have bought a t5700 and do not have a keyboard
to access it.How can i access it remotely using my laptop ? ( I do have a spare monitor though)
Do I have to install the remote software on the thin client or on my laptop.

Thanks.

Good morning, free2talk.

I cannot speak directly to the t5700 as I have no personal experience with it. However, in the case of my t5710, Microsoft's RCON host software was already installed on the Thin Client. All I needed to do was right-click on My Computer, choose Properties, click on the Remote tab, and check the "Allow users to connect remotely to this computer" box in the Remote Desktop section.

You will also need to select remote users to whom you wish to allow remote access. This is accomplished by clicking the Select Remote Users... button. You may keep it simple by adding the Administrator account to the list, which is what I did. My attempts to create a magicJack user, add it to the Administrators group, and configure the account for magicJack did not produce results that satisfied me. The t5710 seems to hard code Administrator privileges and there were a number of capabilities that were unavailable to my added user accounts configured as members of the Administrators group. This is very different than the normal world of Windows, which treats all accounts in the Administrators group equally.

As for client access, you will use Microsoft's Remote Desktop Client, which is included with Windows XP (all versions) and Windows Vista (all versions). You may have to install the Remote Desktop Client if it was left out of the original Windows install. If you're intending to connect to the Thin Client from a client computer with a pre-XP release of Windows, then you'll need this downloadable Remote Desktop Client software from Microsoft.

Here's a pretty nice how-to from Microsoft on setting up RCON access.

I assigned my t5710 a static IP address on my internal network, but since it is a member of my well-defined workgroup, I can access my t5710 by computer name, which appropriately happens to be magicJack, from any of my computers. At one point, and strictly for giggles, I decided to see if I could configure my magicJack server to be accessible from anywhere on the Internet. This involved using port forwarding on my DSL and internal routers to the magicJack server. It functioned unbelievably well and was pretty neat. However, it is a gaping security hole and no one should use this capability without a proper security setup, which I don't have. This would be an ideal application for VPN.

Unfortunately, I had to access my t5710 at least once using a keyboard and monitor (and optionally a mouse) directly connected to the Thin Client. The PS/2 port on the back of the t5710 is pre-configured to work with a mouse and it won't recognize a PS/2 keyboard. This really threw me for a loop because I didn't have any USB keyboards when I purchased the t5710 and I couldn't figure out how the heck to get into the thing! The nice woman from whom I purchased my t5710 explained how the PS/2 port is pre-configured for a mouse and that I would require a USB keyboard to get into the t5710 BIOS. So, I ran down to Office Depot and picked up the least expensive USB keyboard I could find (I think it was like USD12.00 or something.) Once I had that, I was on my way. Everything came into place rather quickly through rapid trial and error. (I wish I had known about this forum before I got my t5710. It would have saved me hours since so many people had been there and done that before me.)

I'm planning to move my magicJack to a laptop as soon as I find an affordable one. I thought I'd be able to find a laptop with a broken keyboard/display for under USD100.00, but it seems even those have become difficult to find of late. Oh well, the search goes on...

Thank you for writing!

Good luck!

Lisa

[hecktic]

Very helpful information.

I was actually going to ask this question in these forums, but I figure ill post it here.

If all MJ really requires is a high speed internet broadband line and a computer with USB port which then routes your inbound/outband calls via your router, then why not simply plug the MJ directly into a router with a USB port?

Ofcourse that means you cannot use the MJ software, but if you just want to use the telephone as is, then is this possible? or does MJ require you use the software?

Im just trying to think of a way to break the dependency of a computer being required to be turned on 24/7 if you wish to have 24/7 phone service using MJ.

[joevv]

Plugging mj into a usb port on a router will not work. Mj installs a softphone on the pc in order to work. So you cannot run mj hardware without the softphone and vice versa.

Joe
Magicjack reseller

[free2talk]

Lisa,
Thanks for the detailed reply.
I will get one of those USB to PS2 Converters for connecting my keyboard to the thin client.
Will install the RCON and take it from there.
Have a good day.

[caudill22]

Lisa,

Being new to magicJack (two weeks), I am so glad that I read your posts. Although I have been using Vonage since 2004 without any complaints, I was skeptical of a VoIP service that costs $20 per year. I have found your posts to be very informative and extremely well written.

I have been looking for an HP thin client on eBay, however after reading your posts I believe I will go the laptop route. I have an older IBM laptop that I have not used in years that should do the trick. It already has XP Pro SP2 loaded on it and since it is currently collecting dust, I might as well get it out of the closet and put it to work. Thanks again for all the time and effort you have put into the posts. You are probably helping way more people than you think. Please continue to update us as you move forward.

James

[GreenMonkey]

Good thread.

The MJ is our primary phone.

Magicjack has been flaky from time to time for me but for the price it works very well. Had trouble with it being too quiet, swapped phones and the new one is louder / more reliable...plus the fix that went out made it a lot less quiet.

The wife has a pay-go cellphone that functions as a backup when she's in the house. The biggest issue for me is I need to finish playing with the Arcade frontend on the K45 and move it upstairs - right now it's on wireless and the microwave kills the wireless throughput (very staticy phone calls).

If you need a cheap low power PC you might consider the Shuttle KPC - very low wattage. The case-only version is called the K45. It's the cheapest of the shuttle cubes. No optical drive (but I installed Windows with an external one).

[APop]

.plus the fix that went out made it a lot less quiet.

How does one know when a fix is issued? Where does one find the fix?

[RANGID]

Hey Lisa;

I have also found your articles very helpful and well written.

I was just wondering how you were coming along with the laptop project.
I am new to MJ and am running it on my Media Center PC which is always on by default. But I have an extra IBM TP that I was thinking of using for MJ instead and would like to know if you are having any luck.

Thanks;

Randy

[admin]

Great post lcompton, you won a free MagicJack

[lcompton]

Good evening, Admin.

Great post lcompton, you won a free MagicJack

I am honored and humbled by this kind recognition of my efforts.

Please accept my sincere appreciation.

[optical]

I was just looking for this topic and came across your. Excellent posts!

Just chip in my experience. I'm an IT guy so the setup is not an issue for me and I running mine on a dedicated strip down XP machine which I share other tasks with. The biggest choice I had to make was keeping the number. I had considered ooma since they offered it but I didn't want to spend the $$. After some thinking, I can care less about keeping the number. Money comes first in this economy!

MJ it is and I took the dive. Yes, 911 was a bit of concern but it was the biggest for me. You can actually test out e911 service?

[mberlant]

In my opinion it is extremely foolhardy to trust 911 service to any VoIP service provider. This is not due to any fault in any provider, but simply because the public internet is designed to be unreliable in favor of low cost.

That being said, MJ subscribes to the same 911 fulfillment agency as all other VoIP service providers, so MJ's ability to successfully complete a 911 call to the correct PSAP and deliver the correct caller information is exactly the same as any "first class" VoIP provider. As long as you register your valid street address and let MJ confirm its validation before you need to call 911 for the first time, you should not worry about MJ handling any 911 call properly.

However, you are still at the mercy of troubles on the internet, your ISP deciding to cap your account 5 minutes before you need to dial 911, and the myriad complaints you have read here about voice quality and call completion problems. The only thing you can relax about is that your 911 calls will fare no worse in this regard than any other MJ call -- but, your 911 calls will also fare no better than any other MJ call.

VoIP remains a terrific replacement for Long Distance, but a miserable replacement for POTS. You would be wise to keep your POTS line and/or your cell phone if you feel you need to have 911 available.

[az2008]

MJ's ability to successfully complete a 911 call to the correct PSAP and deliver the correct caller information is exactly the same as any "first class" VoIP provider.

I've been using the pay-as-you-go services Skype and vbuzzer.com. Assuming they have 911 service, I'd say their ability to deliver is vastly greater than MJ's.

I agree with you that the internet isn't as reliable as a landline or cellular connection. But, MJ brings its own reliability problems that other VoIP providers don't seem to.

My internet service is unavailable perhaps 4 hours twice a year. MJ's unavailability is about 25 times more than that.

Mark

[lcompton]

Good evening, optical.

I was just looking for this topic and came across your. Excellent posts!

I'm much obliged.

Just chip in my experience. I'm an IT guy so the setup is not an issue for me and I running mine on a dedicated strip down XP machine which I share other tasks with.

My use of VoIP is similarly applied here. While I no longer use magicJack, I am using Skype on the infamous Thin Client and a D-Link DPH-50U interface box. This setup has been in place for nearly two months now and functions flawlessly for me.

As long as you do not mind the two-hour call caps magicJack imposes, I cannot see any reason not to use magicJack. It was the call caps that drove me away from magicJack. I had no other complaints of note with the product.

The biggest choice I had to make was keeping the number. I had considered ooma since they offered it but I didn't want to spend the $$. After some thinking, I can care less about keeping the number. Money comes first in this economy!

The telephone number change was a struggle for me at first. But, the longer I thought about it, the more I thought of it as a refreshing change -- kind of like getting new carpeting, furniture or a new hairstyle. I found myself being seduced by thoughts of someone from my past not being able to get hold of me. It soon occurred to me that I'm not that difficult to find on-line if someone really wants to.

When I abandoned magicJack for Skype, I had considered Ooma, but decided against it for two reasons. First, I didn't like the USD250.00 capital investment required for the interface. Second, Ooma received another venture capital infusion of USD16MM last September after realizing that their burn rate was too high and they are failing to generate sufficient ongoing revenue to continue business operations. The Ooma business model appears to be fundamentally stressed. However, there is something that Ooma outsiders (that's us -- the general public) don't know about Ooma that the venture capital investers must know. Otherwise, I'm not sure they would have pumped in another USD16MM. Time will tell...

MJ it is and I took the dive. Yes, 911 was a bit of concern but it was the biggest for me. You can actually test out e911 service?

You may have gathered from my articles that I couldn't care less about 911. I never tested mine and when I purchased my second magicJack I registered my P.O. Box as the address, which effectively rendered 911 unusable. Better yet, Skype does not offer 911 service.

Our government overlords here in Chester County frown on test calls to 911. The corrupt government's official position is that anyone wishing to verify the accuracy of their 911 information should call a special telephone number and leave their telephone number and full street address on a voicemail and it will be checked. It is not clear whether or not any men or women in government will ever actually close the loop with the individual making the inquiry.

If it is of importance to you, I suggest that you investigate the best way to verify your 911 address information in your local community before calling 911 to check your address.

Good luck!

[lcompton]

Good evening, mberlant.

In my opinion it is extremely foolhardy to trust 911 service to any VoIP service provider. This is not due to any fault in any provider, but simply because the public internet is designed to be unreliable in favor of low cost.

While my personal experience with the stability of my broadband Internet service has been excellent, I recognize that individual experiences with Internet access vary widely so I won't argue that some may find Internet access unreliable.

In one of my articles in this thread I tell of an occurrence in which I lost power for about three days and eventually lost telephone service. When power was restored, I had DSL Internet access, but no (Verizon) landline telephone service, which completely surprised me. To make matters worse, this was back in 2006, which was before I had magicJack and had no wireless telephone at the time. So, I was only able to instant message and e-mail folks until Verizon got telephone service restored.

The main issue I have with this statement is your assertion, "but simply because the public internet is designed to be unreliable in favor of low cost." This is patently false. The public Internet is surprisingly highly reliable even if any given individual's access gateway to the Internet is not. In fact, the high reliability of the public Internet, which has only become more reliable over time, is by design and has its roots in the original militarization of the project to withstand enemy attacks. Gone are the days when a major backbone outage caused one entire part of the country to lose Internet access.

The Internet backbone has evolved so well that outages these days are essentially limited to ISP-specific outages, which occur as frequently and severely as one's ISP is competent and prepared enough to handle.

In my prior life as a successful business person, I had two broadband Internet connections and one dial-up connection through three different ISPs to cover ISP-specific outages. In those days, I had zero effective down-time. Even with Verizon as my only broadband provider presently, I've had fewer than ten hours of Internet down time (excluding power failures) since signing up for Verizon DSL in December 2005. The service is just plain reliable.

That being said, MJ subscribes to the same 911 fulfillment agency as all other VoIP service providers, so MJ's ability to successfully complete a 911 call to the correct PSAP and deliver the correct caller information is exactly the same as any "first class" VoIP provider. As long as you register your valid street address and let MJ confirm its validation before you need to call 911 for the first time, you should not worry about MJ handling any 911 call properly.

I don't know if any of this is true or not. I avoid 911 like the plague and the less I know about it the better.

However, you are still at the mercy of troubles on the internet, your ISP deciding to cap your account 5 minutes before you need to dial 911, and the myriad complaints you have read here about voice quality and call completion problems. The only thing you can relax about is that your 911 calls will fare no worse in this regard than any other MJ call -- but, your 911 calls will also fare no better than any other MJ call.

I would argue that the real risk is magicJack availability/stability. Internet access is a lower-risk issue generally speaking and data caps, which are being announced (but not necessarily enforced) by some cable operators, are not a factor at all because the ISP does not sever the Internet link, but instead will begin clocking the data overage for a la carte billing purposes.

In any case, I stand by the original recommendation I made in the first article in this thread that using magicJack as a landline replacement only makes sense if one has a wireless telephone on which to rely as a backup.

VoIP remains a terrific replacement for Long Distance, but a miserable replacement for POTS. You would be wise to keep your POTS line and/or your cell phone if you feel you need to have 911 available.

Again, I found magicJack, and now Skype, to be suitable replacements for my Verizon landline. Since abandoning my Verizon landline last June, I cannot recall ever requiring to use my wireless telephone to make a call because I wasn't able to use magicJack or, now Skype. On the other hand, I'm old and the memory isn't what it once was so I probably have used my wireless telephone at least once because magicJack wasn't available and I just don't remember it.

[optical]

I stayed away from Skype due to the lack of 911 support for my home line. I do however use it a lot for outgoing at the office. I got a polycom CS100S setup and it sounds amazing. I don't use the those $5 mics for biz. Once in a long time I get a call with a slight echo but it's never enough to end the call. Otw, it has been very consistent. I used it for conferencing calls for hours and it saves me a lot.

I have enough faith the call the e911 will get through using MJ. As the other poster indicated, MJ is no worse than other provider as long the the service is available.

I have actually called 911 on one occassion using my cell when our house got robbed and I can attest that it DOES it take one additonal step for your cell carrier to get u through the right local police office! FYI FOR THOSE THAT RELY ON THEIR CELL. I think it delayed my call to the local office no more than 10 seconds or so.

I have to say it took a lot guts for me to just jump on MJ w/o a lot testing but it feels really good to stop paying for that overpriced landline. It's amazing the choice you make given how bad the economy is. I bet nowadays a lot more ppl are willing to take a chance on voip.

I hardly use MJ at home for my personal use since I'm online 90% of the time or on my cell. I have to rely on the older folks for QA. Even with QoS configured on the net, I have to say you will get occasional sound clip on MJ. I think this is on their side and there's nothing I can do to improve that. Hopefully, future sw upgrades will improve this.

[lcompton]

Optical,

I have to say it took a lot guts for me to just jump on MJ w/o a lot testing but it feels really good to stop paying for that overpriced landline. It's amazing the choice you make given how bad the economy is. I bet nowadays a lot more ppl are willing to take a chance on voip.

It wouldn't be a bad thing to use magicJack for a few weeks before cutting the landline. I tested my magicJack for about six weeks beginning in April 2008 (two weeks on my desktop computer and about four weeks on the dedicated Thin Client) through May 2008 before placing the landline cancellation order.

[optical]

Too late, I have already submitted my disconn order. If it doesn't work out then I just move on to plan B. Procrastination got the best of me and kept paying the landline. I never could get enough "testing" until I force everyone to use MJ. As I have said, I already went pass stage of keeping my existing number.

[mberlant]

The main issue I have with this statement is your assertion, "but simply because the public internet is designed to be unreliable in favor of low cost." This is patently false. The public Internet is surprisingly highly reliable even if any given individual's access gateway to the Internet is not. In fact, the high reliability of the public Internet, which has only become more reliable over time, is by design and has its roots in the original militarization of the project to withstand enemy attacks. Gone are the days when a major backbone outage caused one entire part of the country to lose Internet access.

The public internet is not ARPAnet, and never was. TCP/IP remains a stripped down, streamlined version of X.25, optimized for speed over reliability. It has had all of X.25's billing and automatic packet retransmission capabilities removed in the the pursuit of allowing more packets through the network at a given time. Implicit in this is the intention that packets will not be protected against being waylaid or lost. In the public internet it is the responsibility of the network endpoints (your browser and the web server, or your MJ softphone and MJ's SIP server) to add these features back in, if desired, to cope with this inherent unreliability. Your ISP will not hold your transmitted packets until the receiving end acknowledges receipt -- that is your responsibility.

I agree that many ISPs have improved the robustness of their infrastructure. This is necessary compensation for the design of the TCP/IP protocol, and comes none too soon. In fact, if it were not for this improvement of infrastructure we would be back where we were 10 years ago, when SIP could not function at all over the public internet and we were forced to use Frame Relay or ATM services to carry our VoIP traffic. I don't want to go back to that time.

[az2008]

The main issue I have with this statement is your assertion, "but simply because the public internet is designed to be unreliable in favor of low cost." This is patently false. The public Internet is surprisingly highly reliable even if any given individual's access gateway to the Internet is not. In fact, the high reliability of the public Internet, which has only become more reliable over time, is by design and has its roots in the original militarization of the project to withstand enemy attacks. Gone are the days when a major backbone outage caused one entire part of the country to lose Internet access.

The public internet is not ARPAnet, and never was.

Lisa said it has it's "roots" in ARPAnet. The earliest reference to the internet was the original TCP specification, RFC 675[1] proposed Dec. 1974 by Cerf, Delal and Sunshine.

There couldn't have been that much packet-switched robustness to lose between Oct. 1969 (when the first two ARPAnet computers were connected) and Dec. 1974's introduction of what evolved into the standards that would become the public internet.

[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc675

Mark

[mberlant]

There was quite a bit of activity in the public sector during that time, and that is exactly where I was. While ARPAnet was developing their X.25 network, the world's public telecommunications agencies were working together at the CCITT (now the ITU-T) to advance the protocol, introduce PADs (data ATAs), X.75 (a peer-to-peer version of X.25 for international links), etc. In 1981 I oversaw the US side of the implementation of the world's first commercial X.75 link.

Public packet switched networks continued to flourish through the early 1990s, when their billing overhead began to significantly impact their efficiency. This led to the protocol and service morphing into Frame Relay and ATM, which remain popular today for enterprise networks that need better management capabilities than are available with TCP/IP.

Just as now, the same organizations had their fingers in many different pots back then. BB&N were very active in the CCITT at the same time they were prototyping ARPAnet for the US government. The fact that some of the lessons learned from ARPAnet's development mixed with lessons learned from packet switching's development and found their way into TCP/IP is not surprising. However, it is not at all a uniquely direct path from ARPAnet to TCP/IP.

[hsweiss]

The main issue I have with this statement is your assertion, "but simply because the public internet is designed to be unreliable in favor of low cost." This is patently false. The public Internet is surprisingly highly reliable even if any given individual's access gateway to the Internet is not. In fact, the high reliability of the public Internet, which has only become more reliable over time, is by design and has its roots in the original militarization of the project to withstand enemy attacks. Gone are the days when a major backbone outage caused one entire part of the country to lose Internet access.

The public internet is not ARPAnet, and never was. TCP/IP remains a stripped down, streamlined version of X.25, optimized for speed over reliability. It has had all of X.25's billing and automatic packet retransmission capabilities removed in the the pursuit of allowing more packets through the network at a given time. Implicit in this is the intention that packets will not be protected against being waylaid or lost. In the public internet it is the responsibility of the network endpoints (your browser and the web server, or your MJ softphone and MJ's SIP server) to add these features back in, if desired, to cope with this inherent unreliability. Your ISP will not hold your transmitted packets until the receiving end acknowledges receipt -- that is your responsibility.

I agree that many ISPs have improved the robustness of their infrastructure. This is necessary compensation for the design of the TCP/IP protocol, and comes none too soon. In fact, if it were not for this improvement of infrastructure we would be back where we were 10 years ago, when SIP could not function at all over the public internet and we were forced to use Frame Relay or ATM services to carry our VoIP traffic. I don't want to go back to that time.

Sorry, but this is plain wrong. First, the grand-daddy of the Internet was the ARPAnet. It was developed by ARPA (now DARPA), was taken over by the Defense Communications Agency (DCA, now DISA), was split into two networks: the "researchy" ARPAnet and the "operational" MILnet. Later the NSFnet was started using ARPAnet technology and it was NSF who first opened up the 'net to non-government users and the first ISPs came out of the NSFnet (e.g., PSInet)

TCP/IP is not "just a stripped down, streamlined version of X.25." In fact they were being developed but two different (and oftentimes confrontational) communities. On the one hand you had the international (and quite stuffy) CCITT (now ITU) taking forever to specify X.25 (and all the other X.y protocols like X.75). On the other hand you had the IETF doing TCP/IP. My first exposure to the ARPAnet was before TCP/IP - we had an unreliable protocol called NCP (Network Control Protocol) and reliability was based on the underlying Interface Message Processors (IMPs). Later, the ARPAnet converted over to TCP/IP but still running on IMPs (which were later called Packet Switching Nodes or PSNs).

IP is unreliable providing a best-effort datagram service. TCP is RELIABLE with retransmissions and window-based acks. If a recvr does not provide an ack to a set of packets, the sender will automatically re-xmit if using TCP. VOIP however does not run over TCP but rather over UDP which is unreliable. But if you are running an application over TCP, packets may get dropped in the internet "cloud" but the sender will rexmit so nothing is lost by the recvr.

The desires of the Dept of Defense and later the IETF was to build a service that was reliable and could withstand outages. They didn't care about billing - and hence that was left out of the spec. We used to laugh about how the Internet was *always* broken. There are always parts of the 'net that are broken (routers here or there, switches, etc). Yet the network is robust enough and resilient to still keep on running.

[dcham1]

Icompton,

Upon reading that you can't fax with Magic Jack, I have to ask you what fax machine you used? I have a Brother 575 Fax machine and I have had a 75% fax success rate with Magic Jack. The things I did was: (1) I installed a DSL line filter. (2) I changed the compatibility mode to basic to ensure that the baud rate was 9600 (3) I changed the overseas mode to yes (this is Brother's ECM(Error Correction Mode)) (4) Run the magic jack on a VISTA machine vs. my XP Professional. I understand that Magic Jack does not support faxing, but I have been able to get it to work. Maybe with the forthcoming enhancements, we will be able to fax at a better percentage rate and run this program on Mandriva 2009 Linux.