Can I just use an old pc for my whole house setup?

surfzombie · Post by **surfzombie** » Tue Feb 16, 2010 10:01 pm

Hi Everyone, I'm a noob here and this is my first post. I finally cut the umbilical cord with my old phone company. (frontier). I live in rural Utah and don't have many options for internet service. Either forces phone service to get DSL (1 meg max) and barely 128k up or Wireless internet with a dish like thing on my roof aimed at a tower. That's what I have now. I average up to 5 meg down and 1 meg up. I have been looking at the thin clients but have an old pc sitting around collection dust and want to use it rather than buy the thin client. Can anyone tell me how to set up the pc so that it will reboot and auto load MJ when the power goes off. I saw a video on you tube where a guy did that with a thin client. By the way I have had my MJ for well? I just paid my second renewal so going on third year and love it.

TransferCutter · Post by **TransferCutter** » Wed Feb 17, 2010 3:22 pm

I'm using an old computer myself. In Bios, there will be a setting to restart on power restore, or some wording like that. It just means when the power comes back on, the computer will restart.

The big plus of a thin client as I understand it, is the power savings.

surfzombie · Post by **surfzombie** » Wed Feb 17, 2010 3:53 pm

TransferCutter wrote:I'm using an old computer myself. In Bios, there will be a setting to restart on power restore, or some wording like that. It just means when the power comes back on, the computer will restart.

The big plus of a thin client as I understand it, is the power savings.

Thanks that works great. Let me ask you. After you have it all setup and working do you keep a monitor, keyboard, mouse attached and running or can you take them off and run it that way?

crackerjack · Post by **crackerjack** » Wed Feb 17, 2010 4:52 pm

surfzombie wrote:After you have it all setup and working do you keep a monitor, keyboard, mouse attached and running or can you take them off and run it that way?

Assuming your machine doesn't revolt at the idea of running sans mouse/kybd/monitor, you should try something like teamviewer or logmein to remotely control it. If you do have problems running 'headless', check if there are compensating settings in your CMOS (bios) settings

surfzombie · Post by **surfzombie** » Wed Feb 17, 2010 6:15 pm

Thanks for your help. I will just keep them all plugged in and turn the monitor off to save a little energy and only turn it on when I need to. Thanks again.

TransferCutter · Post by **TransferCutter** » Thu Feb 18, 2010 5:37 pm

I have mine on the floor behind my chair and ran a KVM switch with a long cord to my desktop. I also use Teamviewer, as mentioned, to access the computer from my laptop. I also use that computer for downloading my torrents as it's always on and can download overnight.

jimisbell · Post by **jimisbell** » Sun Feb 21, 2010 11:21 am

An old computer will work. But if you start having troubles with cuting out or stuttering, it may be too old. You need speed

surfzombie · Post by **surfzombie** » Sat Feb 27, 2010 3:16 pm

jimisbell wrote:An old computer will work. But if you start having troubles with cuting out or stuttering, it may be too old. You need speed

It's an old Compaq En PIII 1.0GHz with 512 meg ram. It should work fine. The specs are better than most thin clients I see running with MJ.

crackerjack · Post by **crackerjack** » Sat Feb 27, 2010 7:14 pm

jimisbell wrote:An old computer will work. But if you start having troubles with cuting out or stuttering, it may be too old. You need speed

I totally disagree. The single most critical part of the voice quality equation is the stability and consistency of your internet connection.
I ran my first MJ dongle on a PII 66Mhz machine with Win2K and 64MB ram without issue. Dan still owes me for that wager too!!!

surfzombie · Post by **surfzombie** » Sat Feb 27, 2010 8:50 pm

crackerjack wrote:
jimisbell wrote:An old computer will work. But if you start having troubles with cuting out or stuttering, it may be too old. You need speed
I totally disagree. The single most critical part of the voice quality equation is the stability and consistency of your internet connection.

I totally agree with crackerjack. I think that the internet connection is the most important element in voip. I think that the reason many people have a bad experience with the MJ is because of there internet connection and NOT MJ other than customer service issues.

bitstopjoe · Post by **bitstopjoe** » Sat Feb 27, 2010 8:55 pm

I agree 100%............

Joe Sica

jimisbell · Post by **jimisbell** » Sat Feb 27, 2010 9:01 pm

So its totally out of the control of the customer, the end user?

bitstopjoe · Post by **bitstopjoe** » Sat Feb 27, 2010 9:07 pm

No of course not. If someone's PC is loaded with spyware always calling home that's a problem in SO many ways.. A bad app running close to 100% cpu not a good idea either. SO yes a GOOD Internet connection is important, very important. But having a flat tire with a car that can do 200mph doesnt work well either...........
Having a little PC knowledge is a good thing just as one needs to have some idea what to do after turning the key to their car and nothing happens ( other than calling AAA of course

Joe Sica

jimisbell · Post by **jimisbell** » Sat Feb 27, 2010 9:18 pm

Well I have a little PC knowledge...44 years of it...but I dont understand what the MagicJack does. My problem is that some calls, like Corpus Christi to San Diego go perfectly. Some local calls go perfectly. But then, a few minutes ago I tried South Dakota and just couldnt make a go of it. And locally it is NOT uncommon for me to be able to hear the other party but them to get me all chopped up and unreadable. I am using TC dedicated to the phone and getting its Internet through a router that serves the LAN for the house. Usually, but not on the call to South Dakota. Repeated tries kept getting a bad connection. Then just as I was writing that sentence, the person in SD called and she is coming in FINE. And then there is the problem that its not DuPlex, its SimPlex and if one person talks the other is cut off.

My wife is pissed off so it wont be long till I will have to cut it loose unless I can find a solution.

surfzombie · Post by **surfzombie** » Sat Feb 27, 2010 10:42 pm

jimisbell wrote:Well I have a little PC knowledge...44 years of it...but I dont understand what the MagicJack does. My problem is that some calls, like Corpus Christi to San Diego go perfectly. Some local calls go perfectly. But then, a few minutes ago I tried South Dakota and just couldnt make a go of it. And locally it is NOT uncommon for me to be able to hear the other party but them to get me all chopped up and unreadable. I am using TC dedicated to the phone and getting its Internet through a router that serves the LAN for the house. Usually, but not on the call to South Dakota. Repeated tries kept getting a bad connection. Then just as I was writing that sentence, the person in SD called and she is coming in FINE. And then there is the problem that its not DuPlex, its SimPlex and if one person talks the other is cut off.

My wife is pissed off so it wont be long till I will have to cut it loose unless I can find a solution.

First off pc's haven't been around for 44 years. Maybe you have but pc's haven't. I sound like you have a good setup but lets go to the root. What kind of internet connection do you have? How often to you check you through put? (bandwidth). call quality can vary depending on the time of day and how much web traffic there is at the time of the call. Are you downloading or streaming a movie at the same time your on the phone? I have had my MJ for almost three years now and I can tell you from my own usage that. the better my internet connection. the better the call quality. I just dumped my landline which I had dsl with a whopping 1 meg down and barely 128k up. My Mj service was mediocre to half decent at it's best. I now have wireless internet service with up to 7meg down and 2 meg up and my sound quality is like night and day difference. I tend to think that the upload speed is more critical than the down but they both need to be good. Most of the thin clients I see out there have less than 1.0 GHz cup and 256-512 meg or ram and seen to run very well if connected to a good reliable internet service.

crackerjack · Post by **crackerjack** » Sat Feb 27, 2010 11:31 pm

jimisbell wrote:Well I have a little PC knowledge...44 years of it...but I dont understand what the MagicJack does. My problem is that some calls, like Corpus Christi to San Diego go perfectly. Some local calls go perfectly. But then, a few minutes ago I tried South Dakota and just couldnt make a go of it. And locally it is NOT uncommon for me to be able to hear the other party but them to get me all chopped up and unreadable. I am using TC dedicated to the phone and getting its Internet through a router that serves the LAN for the house. Usually, but not on the call to South Dakota. Repeated tries kept getting a bad connection. Then just as I was writing that sentence, the person in SD called and she is coming in FINE. And then there is the problem that its not DuPlex, its SimPlex and if one person talks the other is cut off.

My wife is pissed off so it wont be long till I will have to cut it loose unless I can find a solution.

Try running the VOIP centric test at this location (You must have JAVA installed and enabled)
http://myvoipspeed.visualware.com/
Choose a location close to you that gives 4 tabs of results. Read the details of the tests.

Keep this page bookmarked and run it when you get a call that is of questionable quality. I think you will see a correlation between bad voice quality and deterioration in jitter and packet loss values as measured by this test.

About the only MJ specific parameter that makes a difference is boosting the priority of the MJ process using taskmanager.

Naturally, if your 'net connection is subpar, don't expect another VOIP based phone service to perform any better.

jimisbell · Post by **jimisbell** » Sun Feb 28, 2010 12:02 am

First in answer to your statement about PCs not being around for 44 years. You are almost right, but it depends on what you call a PC. If you mean a comercially built IBM PC, you are right. If you mean a homemade computer that is used personally, you are wrong.

I started with the IBM 7070 in 1959 and was making homebrew computers by 1967...Ok, Ok, thats 43 years ago not 44. But close enough. No, it didnt use ICs or an integrated CPU. but it was a "Personal Computer". I still have my North Star Horizon from about 1970 or so. Then came the Sinclair and several other similar computers, then the TRS 80 and then a late comer, the IBM PC in 1978. So if you are referring only to the one IBM built then you are partially right.

BTW, I have been around for 74 years.

My internet is on Cable and is 5mhz so should be able to handle the task. I dont run the other computers at the same time as using the telephone, not anymore, but it doesnt seem to make any difference. They are connected, but not down/up loading.

jimisbell · Post by **jimisbell** » Sun Feb 28, 2010 12:12 am

I went to that test site and maybe I dont understand what its supposed to do, but clicking on any of the links does nothing as far as I can see. Is it writing a report somewhere?

This is a Linux computer however so maybe once again I come up against the Uncle Bill Monopoly???? Or maybe this disatro of Linux isnt running Java. Havent the time to check that latter out right now but will in the morning.

crackerjack · Post by **crackerjack** » Sun Feb 28, 2010 12:16 am

jimisbell wrote: My internet is on Cable and is 5mhz so should be able to handle the task.

Jim:

Who mentioned anything about your bandwidth?
If your cable is 5mhz I really wonder about the rest of your equipment

Run the test...

jimisbell · Post by **jimisbell** » Sun Feb 28, 2010 12:29 am

surfzombie did. We are getting confused between responses and questions. My comment on bandwidth was not to you, but to surfzombie's question.

Goodnight, I have to go.

crackerjack · Post by **crackerjack** » Sun Feb 28, 2010 12:46 am

jimisbell wrote:We are getting confused between responses and questions.

I can relate...We call it a 'senior moment'

I am sure with your extensive background you can manage the java rpm from sun.com. Suggest you get firefox at the same time as they play very well together on most flavors of 'nix
Until you have a meaningful way to evaluate the integrity of your net connection you'll never understand the issues impacting your VOIP experience.

surfzombie · Post by **surfzombie** » Sun Feb 28, 2010 12:53 am

Jimisbell: I was referring to the IBM pc we have today. I didn't even think about the old Apple,TI,Trash80's and Atari's we all got started with. Sorry for the oversight. I ran the test that crackerjack suggested and the first time I got a MOS score of 4 and the second time I got a 3.4. So it goes to show that things can vary I guess.

jimisbell · Post by **jimisbell** » Fri Mar 05, 2010 4:14 pm

I tried this website. Was returned a message that I needed Java. Went to the suggested site to download it. The download failed because it couldnt find something on the site.

http://myvoipspeed.visualware.com/

I run Win 7 on this computer

murugan · Post by **murugan** » Thu May 26, 2011 8:44 pm

crackerjack wrote:
surfzombie wrote:After you have it all setup and working do you keep a monitor, keyboard, mouse attached and running or can you take them off and run it that way?
Assuming your machine doesn't revolt at the idea of running sans mouse/kybd/monitor, you should try something like teamviewer or logmein to remotely control it. If you do have problems running 'headless', check if there are compensating settings in your CMOS (bios) settings

Got any BIOS settings/suggestions to make it run headless?
See also my post: http://www.phoneservicesupport.com/magi ... html#70531

Any suggestions or settings appreciated. Thanks in advance.