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I got a majick jack the other day at the recommendation of a work friend. Since this is something I have seen on late night TV and had summarily dismissed, I thought I would give a short little review for anyone interested.
MJ is a usb/phone device. It costs $40 and purports to let you receive and make long distant calls on your phone. Long distance is free. You get your own number. You plug your phone into MJ and the MJ into your computer.
You can pre-pay for international calls. I have only called Japan. It is 2.5 cents per minute. It is a like a phone card in that regards, except it is easier to call and there is no minimum charge.
Pros:
It really does work. I got a local number. Sound quality is great for local, long distance, and international calls.
It is cheap. The device is $40 but comes with a year of service. Each additional year is $19.95, or you can prepay 5 years for $49.95. International calls seem to be as cheap or cheaper then calling cards.
It is portable. I could theoretically take it to Japan and make calls to America for free--since the number is tied to the device not the computer. In fact the biggest benefit of a MJ would be for someone who lives out of the country and needs to call America a lot. They can set up a local number for any state, plug in their phone, and presto...free phone calling as long as there is internet access.
911 ready. When you create an account you put in your address. If you call 911 they will respond to that address.
Caller ID, three way calling, and voice mail included.
Cons:
It only is for one phone. You don't tie all your phone outlets to the MJ. It just has one outlet. They claim you can put it where the phone comes into your house and then have multiple phones on it, but I haven't tried it. That is ok for me because our house is small and we have a set of 2 wireless phones off of one Jack.
Depends on power and internet. One nice thing about a land line is that even if the power goes off you still have phone service. If either your power or internet goes down then you have no phone.
You have to be logged onto the computer for it to work. I use XP Pro at home. I have a limited account that is logged on at all times now. I just have it on "switched user" so I can use and log off my other profiles.
911. If you take your MJ to another location it is still tied to the original address you set up for 911. You have to remember to set up a new address if you want 911 to work.
The company says that they do not have local numbers for all areas. It had a local number for my area. Since all local and long distance calls are free, it only matters if you have a local number if you want local people to be able to call you without using long distance.
It works really good for my family. Our house is smaller and we only ever had 2 phones--a wireless set that only used one line. I have a cell phone for work and my wife has a disposable phone for simple calls when she is out or we are at Costco together and can't find each other.
We have depended on calling cards to set up times to Skype with Japan. Our local phone has no long distance or caller ID because we want to save money. My wife always waits till after 8:00pm so she can use my cell when minutes are free to call long distance.
We have our two cells and MJ is better then our local provider and MUCH MUCH cheaper. It is also cheaper then calling cards--especially since calling cards have a minimum charge, which is not a good thing when you are calling to just tell family to get on Skype.
What do you use for your communication needs? I haven't tried paid Skype or Vonage or anything like that. I must say I am happy with MJ, tho I wouldn't recommend it if you were using it to replace your only way to call someone. You really need to be able to call your ISP if your internet goes down. Relying only on MJ would leave you helpless.
Last note: MJ claims you can keep your old phone number, but the guy at Radio Shack told me he hasn't met a customer that has been able to get that to work. Supposedly it will get easier to do in the near future.
Tomorrow I cancel my local phone company.
Posts: 2445 | Registered: Oct 2004
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I have a Czech cell phone with Vodafone CZ prepayed, a French sim card with an Orange prepayed number, and a skype account with no number. I used to have a US cell number that worked here, and a UK number as well, but those have lapsed.
You can actually get a skype number, or redirect your phone calls from (or call from) another number using skype. This way if you travel, you can have a call forward from any country to your skype account, which will then theoretically ring through to any other number you have connected. I have not tried this with my french number as I don't have a lot of use for it unless I'm actually in France. I generally don't use the phone much, so it's never a big deal for me. If my parents or friends want to call me, they can call via skype to my mobile in CZR for a few cents- I keep the number posted on my facebook.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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I used Skype for about a year, and it worked great. I bought a Skype phone and also used my wireless headphones at time right though the computer. I really liked it, although at times the quality wasn't as good as a land line.
It also saved my butt, as I had a female employee claim I was very ride and suggestive to her on the phone. What she didn't know was that I had set up Skype to record my calls from work, and I had copies of her calls.
Needless to say I was neither rude nor suggestive to her.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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I've got an account with VOIP.ms, and am using a SparkLAN ATA to connect the wireless phones in our home.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Kwea: It also saved my butt, as I had a female employee claim I was very ride and suggestive to her on the phone. What she didn't know was that I had set up Skype to record my calls from work, and I had copies of her calls.
I'm curious to know if this is legal over the internets. I think there are some restrictions against doing it on the phone, in certain states. I don't know how it works for private phone calls when you're not dealing with the police, but I still thought there was something illegal about recording calls... I seem to recall Crank Yankers having to be recorded in Nevada, but that could have something to do with the calls being used on the TV show. Hmm.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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There are only like a dozen states that require you to have permission from both parties in order to record a phone conversation, and I know Michigan is one of them. For the majority of the states, and for federal law, so long as one person knows about it and agrees to it (for example, you, the caller/receiver), it's legal.
However, the rules on what is and isn't admissible in court are complex and I think depend on the situation though from what I understand it is very difficult to get phone conversations admitted as evidence if you do it on your own. Dagonee could probably shed some light on where I might be off track here, if anywhere.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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TomD,I have not heard of Voip.ms, can you tell us how it works? I would love it if other people explained how your system works, like paid Skype, and the pricing.
Posts: 2445 | Registered: Oct 2004
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There are literally dozens of major VOIP providers out there, all providing roughly the same service. Some, like Vonage or Charter Cable's VOIP service, cost almost as much as regular phone service (minus the taxes); the average is about $25/month. In return, however, you're usually -- but not always, mind you; Vonage couldn't get a local number in my area code -- guaranteed a number in the area code of your choice, e911 support, and prioritized voice traffic. They often throw in a router, too.
But this amounts to pure profit for these services, since almost all of them are simply broadcasting data -- basically for free -- over existing broadband connections. (This is why so many services, including Skype, offer basic Internet-to-Internet calls for free.) Their cost comes in only when you need a number that can be dialed from the outside world, or can dial the outside world. The latter is easier for them to provide; they simply need access to dial-out APs. The former is trickier. For it to really work, the provider must be able to assign a Direct Inward Dial number (or DID) to the address of your VOIP account. Your VOIP account is probably using SIP (a common protocol) to listen for calls, although Skype uses its own method (and thus can't directly communicate with non-Skype VOIP services.)
DIDs, compared to bandwidth, are expensive; as I understand it, they must be leased from the actual local carriers where the DIDs are said to reside. Your VOIP provider, of course, doesn't care where you want your DID to come from; this means that you can purchase a DID that's based in New York even if you live in California. (The advantage of this is that if you have a lot of friends in New York, calling your DID is now a local call for them. You also appear to have a New York phone number, which may be an issue for a business that wants to lie about its location. Note that you don't save any long distance fees yourself, however, because VOIP by its very nature doesn't charge long distance fees on outbound traffic.)
Anyway, DIDs are comparatively expensive. By this I mean they cost your VOIP provider about eighty cents a month to maintain. Note that Skype charges ten dollars a month for an inbound number; it's reasonable to assume that eight or nine dollars of this is pure profit, even if you figure they're spending a dollar's worth of time monthly making sure your connection is good at all times (which they probably aren't.)
If you're willing to risk poor service, though, you can go with a DID wholesaler and/or low-cost VOIP carrier. It's possible that your call traffic won't be prioritized as efficiently as calls carried by Vonage or Gizmo or Charter or Skype, especially in this post-net-neutrality era, but it's a LOT cheaper.
By this I mean: I'm with VOIP.ms. I can have an unlimited number of free softphones active at any time, all with dedicated sub-account numbers. As a free service, I can specify the ring order for each of these numbers -- so that if one doesn't answer, the next one rings -- and/or individualized voicemail accounts. I can hook up any of these subaccounts to any number of DIDs. For free.
Each DID I choose to purchase, anywhere in the world, costs me a dollar a month. If I want e911 service on it, I'm required by federal law to pay another $1.50 in taxes on that line. Every minute spent talking on the phone, in either direction, costs me one cent; if I want "premium" routing, which is basically the service Vonage provides, I can receive it at the rate of 1.25 cents per minute.
To sum up: phone service on two dedicated incoming numbers (and an infinite number of SIP accounts) costs $2 a month, plus $1.50 on one outbound line for e911 service. To equal the $25 cost of Vonage, I'd have to talk for over two thousand minutes each month.
Now, there is one catch. By default, regular phones can't talk over SIP. You need to either buy phones that have their own Ethernet jacks (which are really, really expensive) or have USB adapters (which requires you to have one computer on all the time) -- or you can buy what's called an Analog Telephone Adapter, which is a device you plug into your LAN that has one or more phone jacks in it. You plug a regular phone into the ATA, then configure the ATA (usually using an internal website) to connect to one or more SIP accounts to which you've assigned a DID. And if your adapter does its job correctly, you'll never know that you're not on a copper phone line.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Note that if you're a business with a lot of phone lines, you are wasting money every single day you don't convert to VOIP.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Except that you can't reliably receive faxes over VOIP. And you can't run credit cards. And if your internet is occasionally spotty, it is not just an inconvenience, it is crippling.
Posts: 364 | Registered: Dec 2005
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Very true. Of course, I'd say that if your Internet connection is occasionally spotty, you should probably get that addressed.
On the fax topic: you can reliably receive faxes and run credit cards over VOIP, provided your Internet connection is reliable. Like I said, the trick here is to have an analog telephone adapter (ATA) (or, if you're a large business, have an ATA incorporated into your PBX). Faxes and credit card machines both use analog connectors, but do not have to use analog phone lines. (Note, too, that many modern credit card machines have LAN connections -- and are many, many times faster than the old dial-up machines as a consequence.)
Personally, though, I think it's time that people started to phase out the whole "fax" phenomenon; scan-to-email works a lot better, for a lot more things, and is considerably cheaper and greener to boot.
But, yes, if your Internet connection is bad, you'll have problems using any service that relies on your connection the Internet. It'd be a good idea to find a better Internet provider before you went with VOIP in that situation.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I moved my chair into my majic jack and it busted, so I think I want TomD's set up. Is there a special name for that type of hardware and is it available at Best Buy, Staples or Radio Shack? Or do I have to buy it online?
Thanks.
EDIT: *sheepish grin* I just found it in your other post. Analog Telephone Adapter. Where all can I buy them?
Posts: 2445 | Registered: Oct 2004
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You can buy 'em almost anywhere. Note: I do not actually recommend the SparkLAN; I bought it because it was the cheapest ATA I could find, and I had to jump through many, many hurdles to use it. You're better off with a more reputable brand.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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The only ATAs I can find are for Skype or Vonage. WIll those work, or do I need a more generic one like from Cisco?
Posts: 2445 | Registered: Oct 2004
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You need a more generic one. Skype doesn't do standard SIP, so you can only use it with Skype; Vonage's boxes only work with Vonage's service. That said, you can find Vonage (but not Skype) boxes that have been "unlocked" to work with any VOIP provider on eBay.
I strongly recommend an ATA from Grandstream, Linksys or Zoom.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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