not 1 trouble free day in almost 2 weeks

tjtomthumb · Post by **tjtomthumb** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 10:19 pm

I received my MagicJack just before Christmas and have not had 1 trouble free day. At first, absolutely terrible, almost unusable audio. Then went a few days through the "no voice in" ordeal, now, best it's been but still getting choppy, skippy voice in and out both. Getting pretty fed up with the whole thing. Bad thing is, my wife and I are both on very limited income and can't afford to lose the shipping costs. Really not sure what to do next.

trodecke · Post by **trodecke** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 1:27 am

I suppose if you're really not happy you can return it for a refund. As best I recall the shipping costs were only $7 or so, the $39.95 is supposed to be refundable.

What type of PC are you running this on? Is it doing anything else at the time that you're making a phone call? What type of Internet connection do you have? What type of numbers do you get when you run the speed tests and DSL reports?

There are lots of things that can account for choppy/jittery voice. The most common though is jitter. In network terms it means that the voice packet didn't make it to the other end in time so the other end asked the sender to resend the packet (retrans). This can cause the voice packets to show up out of order which in turns causes more retrans to take place. There's really only 2 ways to fix that; increase the pipe that packets travel (get a faster connection) or increase the buffering on the VoIP device. Since I don't think we can control the buffer settings that leaves you with getting a bigger pipe. Note that when I say get a bigger pipe it doesn't necessarily mean get a faster cable modem/DSL connection. If you've got downloads taking place that can take up the bandwidth (peer to peer, bit torrent, etc). Stopping these services can free up the bandwidth. If you're running this on an under powered PC such as one with Vista with all the eye candy, firewalls, add blockers, screensavers, etc., you can get the same effect.

tjtomthumb · Post by **tjtomthumb** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 6:21 am

I am running an E-machine T6542, which has an AMD Athlon 64 Processor3500+, 2.2 Ghz, 2000 MHz System Bus, 1.5 gig ram, G-Force FX5200 Video Card with Windows Vista Premium. I have the 1.5 DSL from Windstream, and this unit is wired direct to the modem. My wife has an older HP Pavillion 752H with XP home which connects on a Linksys Model# WRT54G wireless Router with the Linksys Model# WMP54G PCI wireless card . Both machines are running IE 7. I have contacted Windstream, and the speed tests came out great. Also have the DSL filter on all phone jacks, even added another one between the MajicJack and phones, again, probably a waste, but eliminated another possibility.

I also have downloaded hot fix KB940105 and KB936710 from Microsoft. Don't know if this has anything to do with it or not, but have recently, during this time, downloaded them.

On December 6 also I done a total destructive, reformat hard drive, reload everything fresh restore on the E-machine and added my Vista Premium Upgrade since my warranty was 12 months & I purchased this unit 12-26-06 so I would have free tech help if needed. Everything went smooth, no problems. I also a few days later did the same to the HP, so both units are on fresh total destructive restores, disk clean-up, defrag, etc with everything , temp files, history, cookies, etc deleted every day. So both machines have freshly redone operating systems without the years junk build up to cause problems.

The first thing I found out was our cordless phone was a 2.4, same as our router, so first, I purchased a Uniden SECT 6.0 model# 2082-2 and tried it for awhile. Returned that and now have the Panasonic DECT 6.0 model# KX-TG1033. Picked these phones because of user reviews of 4 to 5 stars. Our other, "regular" phone line has a Uniden 5.8 model# CXAI 5198, corded base with 1 cordless handset. So I don't think it should be the phones we are using.

Both computers have a powered USB hub. Have tried about all the ports on both machines, powered hub & direct plug to computer. There has been big differences where and how you hook-up. On the HP, the short USB extension cable has to be used on direct hook-up. On the E-machine, I've done the same, and am now plugged direct to a Belkins PCI 2 port USB card without the extention. Had it in the powered hub but it keeps booting the MagicJack off line.

It is working much better, but still have some voice in and out break-up - skip etc. It does it on both systems. I am on the Ohio 614 area code and they have had some voice issues. Since that was repaired a few days ago, things have been much better, but, as I said, still some break-up & skip. Is anyone else on the Ohio 614 area code having problems? Windstream had me run the speed tests and that checked out real good. I have this issue at all times, on both systems. I can do a disk clean-up, defrag etc and reboot and reload the MagicJack, always run the quick fix, have NOTHING but the magicjack open with the other HP system shut off, doesn't matter.

I'm hoping some of you may have some ideas and also since we're past the holidays, maybe tech will be easier to get ahold of and have a little more time to spend with me on this. I don't make many long distance calls where I will be using this a lot, but some of my doctors, etc are not local numbers and I have to have a reliable way to contact them. Cannot afford regular long distance with our income as we don't make enough calls to make that worth while but have to have something. Was using the yahoo messenger phone-out 1 cent a minute but hate using the headphone set up, so this regular phone thing with the MagicJack is a much better way to go, and my wife can also be in on the conversation this way where with the yahoo set-up she couldn't.

Any suggestions?

johnr · Post by **johnr** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 9:58 am

Yes, service has been lousy. I have pretty good equipment too, and same problems. It's been pretty good the past 2 days though.
I guess there are 3 possibilities:
1. Just keep it and use it when it works; you can't expect perfect service for $20 a year.
2. If everyone who bought it within the past month sends it back, Magic Jack management would be aware that there's a problem and they need to improve.
3. If the company becomes prominent, or goes out of business, the original Magic Jack may become a collectors item and you can sell it for big money on Ebay.

trodecke · Post by **trodecke** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 3:23 pm

Nice setup you've got there. Beats the rig I'm running MJ on. It's a P4 1.8G with 256M RAM running WXP Pro. Since this is my only non-cell phone service I needed it up 24x7 and had an old Gateway box that I reloaded WXP on. With that I'm not really having any issues quality wise. I do hear some background static, more than I would on a real landline but nothing that's so bad I can't use it. I'm also picking up interference from a local radio station but again, not enough to really cause me any headaches. I wouldn't want to run a business on it but it suffices for what I want it for, a home phone # to give to folks so I don't have to give my cell # out.

snowigloo · Post by **snowigloo** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 3:26 pm

Have you tried it on another computer to see if its the magicjack or something on your computer?

tjtomthumb · Post by **tjtomthumb** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 4:37 pm

Yes snowigloo, I've tried it in about every port on both my computers, 1 with xp home, 1 with vista premium, and on the powered usb hubs I have on both computers, along with connecting them direct also. That's why I'm kinda wondering if it has anything to do with the area code 614-707-XXXx connection number I chose, or would this have anything to do with it?

snowigloo · Post by **snowigloo** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 7:13 pm

You should chat with them and try to get a replacement. When mine kept disconnecting on me they sent me a new one free of charge right away.

kumar · Post by **kumar** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 7:23 pm

Try it w/o the DSL filter, sometimes it makes a difference.
Hope it helps a little
Kumar

johnr · Post by **johnr** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 8:56 pm

They're getting better, I made 20 test calls today and all 20 connected properly, Yaaaaay.

kumar · Post by **kumar** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 9:00 pm

johnr wrote:They're getting better, I made 20 test calls today and all 20 connected properly, Yaaaaay.

Did you try taking out the filter?
Kumar

johnr · Post by **johnr** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 9:05 pm

I don't have a filter, I think tjtomthumb has the filter.

LikeMagic · Post by **LikeMagic** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 9:18 pm

I've been using MJ just about 10 days now and the service has been up & down as well. Sometimes there's garble audio on the far-end, sometimes, no audio at all. But the last couple days have been good. I'm sure MJ is still tweaking their service to make sure it's reliable for everyone. After all, if they want to sell by words of mouth, their service's better be good.

MJ is still a cool tech toy to play with, I'm not ready to rip out my reliable landline phone service as yet.

kumar · Post by **kumar** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 9:26 pm

LikeMagic wrote:I've been using MJ just about 10 days now and the service has been up & down as well. Sometimes there's garble audio on the far-end, sometimes, no audio at all. But the last couple days have been good. I'm sure MJ is still tweaking their service to make sure it's reliable for everyone. After all, if they want to sell by words of mouth, their service's better be good.

MJ is still a cool tech toy to play with, I'm not ready to rip out my reliable landline phone service as yet.

Well i ripped out my landline 2 years ago when i got sunrocket

but anyhoo...my sister had a 1.5 hour call with her bf and he/she didnt complain at all. Now im rolling my minutes over again and have a happy talkative family.
Kumar

tjtomthumb · Post by **tjtomthumb** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 7:47 pm

Sorry Kumar that it took me so long to get back with you. I took took the DSL filter off and the audio quality dropped terribly. I have put it back on and am at a "satisfactory" point. I am at what I will call at a "cell phone" level rating. I've talked to people on their cell phones that were at a lot less audio quality than what I have now and I've talked to a lot of cell phones that were much better than what I currently have.

I agree with another post I saw somewhere else, with some tweaking by MagicJack I can see this being the best thing to come out in a long time. You can tell there is some great potential with the MagicJack.

Yesterday I encountered another issue. When I run the "fix" or "optimize" program, I get a "red X" next to a couple lines:

X A problem was encountered while checking your audio settings.
X We could not access your MagicJack

It doesn't seem to be effecting anything so I haven't worried about it.

Thanks again for the suggestions.

vfrpilot · Post by **vfrpilot** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 7:32 am

tjtomthumb wrote:
Yesterday I encountered another issue. When I run the "fix" or "optimize" program, I get a "red X" next to a couple lines:

X A problem was encountered while checking your audio settings.
X We could not access your MagicJack

It doesn't seem to be effecting anything so I haven't worried about it.

Thanks again for the suggestions.

That may have something to do with the browser you're running the fix thru -
I get X's when I use IE, but when I use FireFox, all goes well - with running the fix that is, nothing else.

jackiehsu97 · Post by **jackiehsu97** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:33 pm

Firefox seems to be the best browser for the fixes...

-=Jackie-=-=