Multiple things

[MJSkeptic]

Okay I wasn't really sure if this belonged in the Tech Support section or not, but I couldn't find a relavent thread.

First of all, this is out of mild curiosity. Has anyone tried plugging their MJ into an XBOX 360 USB port or a Wii USB port? I know the Wii can go into 'standby' mode, and when its in this mode I am able to plug other things into the Wii. It is also connected to the internet, so if it's recieving power, and has an internet connection, ... might this work, saving a lot of money on the electrical bill? I know lots of people have been talking about the spiked up electrical bill.

Also, all the people I have seen post have been American, or I have assumed so, I am a Canadian, ..so the MJ should work fine for me too, right?

Thirdly, fully about a third of the people I have seen post on this, and other forums, have had endless problems, while the rest of people went fully smoothly. Is this just human error, or is there a problem with the product itself, or both?

Fourth, I wasn't sure if you have a magicjack, and the 'callee' doesn' have a magicjack, is the long distance call free for BOTH or just free for you?

I'm assuming that MJ will only work for ONE phone on ONE line, or can you plug multiple phones into it, and or get multiple lines off one MJ, or will I have to order several MJs?

If I do get multiple MJs, can I get the same number for each one, or will I have to live with remembering several numbers? Also, if indeed I do get multiple MJ's, is it a 19.95 charge for each MJ?

I realize this is a lot of questions for one post, and one person, but I would like to be absolutely sure on everything before I order one for myself, and reccommend this to my friends. I greatly appreciate the time someone would put in to read and answer my questions.

[str8shooter]

I'm not going to attempt to answer all your questions. My biggest beef with MJ is the lack of area codes. I live in South Dakota. The long distance is free for me, but if my neibor calls me, he has to pay long distance charges. I selected a Berkley California area code, now my daughter in school can call me as a local call. Are you confused yet? Good luck Freind

[saxman]

Okay I wasn't really sure if this belonged in the Tech Support section or not, but I couldn't find a relavent thread.

First of all, this is out of mild curiosity. Has anyone tried plugging their MJ into an XBOX 360 USB port or a Wii USB port? I know the Wii can go into 'standby' mode, and when its in this mode I am able to plug other things into the Wii. It is also connected to the internet, so if it's recieving power, and has an internet connection, ... might this work, saving a lot of money on the electrical bill? I know lots of people have been talking about the spiked up electrical bill.

Also, all the people I have seen post have been American, or I have assumed so, I am a Canadian, ..so the MJ should work fine for me too, right?

Thirdly, fully about a third of the people I have seen post on this, and other forums, have had endless problems, while the rest of people went fully smoothly. Is this just human error, or is there a problem with the product itself, or both?

Fourth, I wasn't sure if you have a magicjack, and the 'callee' doesn' have a magicjack, is the long distance call free for BOTH or just free for you?

I'm assuming that MJ will only work for ONE phone on ONE line, or can you plug multiple phones into it, and or get multiple lines off one MJ, or will I have to order several MJs?

If I do get multiple MJs, can I get the same number for each one, or will I have to live with remembering several numbers? Also, if indeed I do get multiple MJ's, is it a 19.95 charge for each MJ?

I realize this is a lot of questions for one post, and one person, but I would like to be absolutely sure on everything before I order one for myself, and reccommend this to my friends. I greatly appreciate the time someone would put in to read and answer my questions.

Don't know about the x-box, but I doubt it-my local electric bill will shoot up an amazing 3 bucks a month if I keep my pc running 24-7, I shut it off at night and let voice mail take calls-
You will pay no long distance to any place in America or Canada and it's free to anywhere to another MJ user. Your callers are on their own.
I have two phones using MJ. Yes , you can use extensions around the house with the same number. Each MJ and each computer gets it's own number. Each MJ will be registered. If you have more then one number and want them all to go through and ring your phone use Grand Central-it's free-
MJ works good once you get it set up and figured out. It is still new and there is problems from time to time but nothing major.

[saxman]

I'm not going to attempt to answer all your questions. My biggest beef with MJ is the lack of area codes. I live in South Dakota. The long distance is free for me, but if my neibor calls me, he has to pay long distance charges. I selected a Berkley California area code, now my daughter in school can call me as a local call. Are you confused yet? Good luck Freind

I had the same problem when I first got mine. I had a local area code but the prefix was from a town 30 miles away. This caused my local callers to have to pay a toll to call me-Well, that wouldn't work, so I got Grand Central. It,s free from Google and you can pick a local number, give them your MJ number and give the local GC number out. All calls from local people are free. When they call you it rings your MJ number. simple and all of it is free! It was less then 2 weeks later that MJ had a local prefix for me and I was able to switch to a new local number and stop the GC. It's a little bit of a hastle giving out all the different numbers but it works. I was able to stop the local phone service saving me a bunch there and they are currently giving out my MJ number when people call me on their old number. I now only pay them for their dsl service. Grand Central is great if you have more then one number and want to give out just one number to everyone. They also have their own free voicemail.

[couch-potato]

I'll try and answer what I can...hope this helps...

1) Xbox - no idea. Electrical bill - no big deal for me, as my computer was on 24/7 long before I got the MJ.

2) I am in Canada, and MJ works fine. You will get stuck with an American area code, which confuses people, so I spoofed my outgoing callerID so that people think I am calling them from my cell phone. Also, when using the callerID spoofer, now I don't have to dial 1+area code when I am calling someone local. As for incoming calls, no one I know wants to dial long distance to call me locally, so I don't give out my MJ phone number, I use it only for outgoing calls. I only gave the MJ number to my friend who lives in the US so that she can call me without long distance, and to my mother, who also lives in Canada, but she has to pay long distance to call me anyway. And I don't want my mother to call my cell phone 'cause she talks a lot and she'll use up all my airtime.

3) problems - both human error and product flaws - it may take some technical computer knowledge to do some of the fixes to improve sound quality or to run the caller ID spoofer. MJ seems to have a lot of downtime while upgrading things. For $20/year I can live with it. I wouldn't recommend MJ as your only phone, I have a cell phone as well.

4) incoming - If someone calls your MJ number - they will pay long distance according to their calling plan. If your neighbour calls your MJ number (which has a US area code) they will pay long distance because they are calling a different area code. If you pick a MJ area code in Florida, and your parents live in Florida, then they can call you from Florida without long distance charges.

4) outgoing - you can call someone else w/o a MJ anywhere in US or Canada - you don't pay long distance - receiver doesn't pay long distance - UNLESS - the receiver has set up call forwarding to another area code, and is billed for the long distance by their telephone service, or they are on a cell phone and are outside their local calling area. This is the same whether you are using a MJ or not. For example; If someone calls my cell phone, but I happen to be on vacation outside my area code, I will pay incoming long distance charges. Or, if I set up my cell phone to automatically call forward my calls to another area code, my cell phone carrier will charge me long distance.

5) multiple phones on one MJ line - you can put multiple phones on one MJ line - they all are on the same line. There are two ways of doing this: 1) I have a multiple handset cordless phone, where one cordless phone plugs into the MJ, the rest of them are simply plugged into the electrical outlet, not the phone outlet, and they communicate with each other cordlessly. My cordless phones can be anywhere in the house, but they all are connected to one MJ line. 2) You can disconnect the landline by unplugging the phone cord where it goes into your house. Then connect a phone cord from the MJ to one of the phone wall jacks. Now you can plug as many phones as you want into any of the phone jacks in your house, and they all connect to the one MJ line.

5) multiple phone lines on one MJ - impossible - when you register the MJ, you get one phone number. You could use GrandCentral to create an additional phone number and have it forwarded to your MJ number.

5) multiple phone lines on multiple MJ - I haven't done this - but I think you need a different computer for each MJ - I don't think you can run two MJ on the same computer - theoretically I guess you could get as many MJ as you want - each one would have a different number - each one would cost $39.95 - why would you want them all to have the same number? That would be the same as having multiple phones on the same line - then you wouldn't need to buy multiple MJ. The only way this makes sense is if you want multiple phones in different locations (like you want your home phone and office phone to ring with the same number). You could possibly use call forwarding or GrandCentral to get them to work together.


P.S. GrandCentral is a pretty cool service, but I found it pretty much useless since it doesn't have Canadain area codes.

[MJSkeptic]

Hmm.
Thanks for all the time and effort you guys put in, It's greatly appreciated, and it's very helpful.
From the sounds of things I think I should wait until they iron out a few kinks in the system before I buy an MJ. I am a bachelor so I'm lookin for ways to decrease my bills as best I can, as I'm sure most of you have been through that phase already

Thanks a load, I'll keep watching this topic for anyone who has an answer to my wii/xbox question. My friend has one and he is really curiuos if you can use MJ on it

[MagicHack]

First of all, this is out of mild curiosity. Has anyone tried plugging their MJ into an XBOX 360 USB port or a Wii USB port? I know the Wii can go into 'standby' mode, and when its in this mode I am able to plug other things into the Wii. It is also connected to the internet, so if it's recieving power, and has an internet connection, ... might this work, saving a lot of money on the electrical bill? I know lots of people have been talking about the spiked up electrical bill.

This will not work. You MUST plug the magicJack into a USB port on a Windows (or Mac) machine. There is software that runs (the softphone) in conjunction with the actual magicJack hardware. This software will not run on your XBox or Wii. If you want, you could run the magicJack with a Thin Client, which might save you some electricity costs.

[astro46]

i've been using mj for about 3 weeks. except for today, when there was no outgoing service all morning, it has worked fine. the only problems that i have are with the software: not being able to start itself at boot, not remembering settings, making computer standby inoperable and the outlook addin not working. and virtually useless tech support. if they could work out some of the issues with the software it might be ok (at this point even responding to the issues would be an improvement).

as things stand now, i will likely return it.

[MJSkeptic]

Alright, thanks for all the info folks