New to MagicJack

[cromike]

I just bought a MagicJack today and I still haven't connected it to anything. I have been looking around the forums here and other places before going out and buying. I was really surprised by the amout of super negative and super positive things people have to say about this. It seems like there is NO middle ground when it comes to the MJ.
After reading here I took my wife's old laptop Compaq Presario 700 out of the attic and I am planning on using it and the MJ together exclusively. We haven't used it in almost 3 yrs so it has been updating for several hours.
Other than using the MJ on its own computer, what advice do you have for an absolute newbie?
What must haves, extras, or others things should I think about or watch out for?
I am not a programmer and I don't really want to find a computer jargon dictionary out to read responses but I am really interested in hearing what you have to say. (I was pretty surprised that there is not a newcomer sticky note. If there is, I didn't see it. I bet that there are a lot of people like me who want this sort of advice.)
Thanks in advance!!

[Matt9876]

Your headed in the right direction,

(1) Dedicated machine for the MJ.

(2) Confirm with VoIP speed test that your internet connection can handle a MJ.

(3) If you do have problems get help here or online type chat support.

[az2008]

what advice do you have for an absolute newbie?

Familiarize yourself with the wiki: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MagicJack

I think that will get you up to a basic level of knoweldge.

Mark

[cromike]

I got it hooked up and I have to say that the quality isn't perfect 100% of the time but still I would give it an A. When no other applications are working, it works perfectly. It might do fine with a lot running on something newer with a lot of other stuff running but this works for me. The old machine that I am using it on has only an 18 gig hard drive and I don't think it has more than 256 Mb of RAM. It can't handle two things at the same time but it seems to deal with the MJ pretty well. The only thing that was slowing the MJ down this morning when I tried using it was some updating that the computer was doing. (I haven't even turned it on in over three years - it downloaded >100 updates just for XP).
I downloaded Avast antivirus software but I was wondering if I should get rid of that as well? How bare bones should I make that machine?
Thanks for the links and the responses.

[davrow]

MJ on a standalone is happier without firewall / anti-virus software. If you have a router and want protection, run a firewall on the router.

Thin clients are good because everything is flash memory, so if you get a virus, all you do is reboot.

With your laptop, I would say have a disk image backup that is bootable, and leave it wide open. Get a virus? Restore from your backup.

There are so many problems new users have that a sticky just doesn't help. Some just can't understand the advice that needs to be given when something goes wrong.

It is much better to have your experience. Plug it in, use it.

Then no sticky needed, right?

[cromike]

I don't think that this really needs to be a sticky because after I started using it everything was actually a lot more straight forward than I would have guessed from the stickies that do exist . Everything seems to be working pretty smoothly so for now I am not going to strip the antivirus software.
If anything new comes up and I need help, I will post in the support forum but for now I think that it is working as advertised.

Thanks for the great responses!

[TOF]

I don't think that this really needs to be a sticky because after I started using it everything was actually a lot more straight forward than I would have guessed from the stickies that do exist . Everything seems to be working pretty smoothly so for now I am not going to strip the antivirus software.
If anything new comes up and I need help, I will post in the support forum but for now I think that it is working as advertised.

Thanks for the great responses!

I would suggest you do the disk image thing even with the AV installed. You could always take it out after imaging and see if any positive or negative effects are noted. And restore the image if needed due to an infection or if your comfort level is "uncomfortable".

BTW, it's always wise to copy your addressbook to another location in case you need to restore it due to an update or maintenance of the machine.

Enjoy MJ

[mberlant]

As a dedicated purpose PC, there is really no need for a PC-based outbound firewall, since there won't be any software on the PC besides MJ (and maybe a time client, like Tardis) calling out. For inbound protection, your NAT router's inherent inbound protection properties are plenty. Since you won't be forwarding any ports to the MJ PC, there won't be any uninvited packets going to that PC.