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I have Comcast service at home, it’s the triple play bundle with the internet, phone and cable tv and to be honest most of the services work very well. It did take some time getting Comcast to configure my Tivo HD cable cards before they worked, a few comcast service trucks had to roll, new cable ran to my house, but eventually they got it to work. My internet is really fast (8mbps service) and my home phone well that’s another story. See my modem that comcast provides needs to be rebooted about once a week because the phone service just stops working and that becomes a bit of a pain.

So I started looking for other options. A long time ago I heard about Magic Jack through tech blogs and even my father-in-law mentioned it to me at one point if I recall and at first I thought this company won’t last a year. I had experience with VOIP providers after all, I was a customer of SunRocket who tanked and I had to fight to get my prepaid money back since I paid for a year in advance each year, after year 2 they tanked and I was due about 10 months worth of premiums. So I thought Magic Jack would be in the same boat, that being the titanic. Boy was I wrong.

Now that Magic Jack is still around and that is is a matured technology with thousands of new customers signing up every day I thought I’d give it a try. I wasn’t about to order online, I’ve heard far to many horror stories where people were double and triple billed and never received the product. I knew my local walmart had it so I made a trip and bought one locally, I knew doing that I could return it easily if it didn’t work and didn’t have to worry about double and triple billing.

So I got the Magic Jack yesterday on 1/2/2010 and hooked it up when I got home to one of my cordless phones. What I liked about the jack is that you don’t have to register it to test it. They give you 30 minutes of talk time free or 48 hours after intially plugging it in to register it. So I plugged it in, made a few test phone calls and decided it was worth pursuing further. Since when I bought it the Magic Jack included a year of service I registered it for the 911 service and was able to pick out a local phone number here in Nashville and within about 2 minutes I was up and running on my Magic Jack with my phone number!

To register the jack its simple, I did it on a WinXP machine, all you do is plug it into a usb port and wait, it will automatically start the magic jack software, download the updates and then walk you through registering it. Could not be easier! I did find myself almost clicking buttons, don’t do it! The software will prompt you when to push buttons and tell you when to wait! Thing was one of the easiest things I have ever installed, no drivers, or updates manually having to be applied. Very slick install process and nice GUI (Graphical user Interface)

I made more calls to validate it worked and everything was perfect, clear as the comcast service and much cheaper! So I thought, if I can run one phone off of it can I run all my phones off of it? I plugged the jack directly into my wall phone jack much like my previous comcast phone line was connected and tried to use it, static but I could get a dial tone. Unfortunately I couldn’t dial…. So I went outside made sure my local TELCO connection was unplugged which it was, made sure no other connections were made to my phone system and there wasn’t so I went to plan B. I got a telephone splitter and hooked that into my Magic Jack, plugged my alarm system directly into the splitter, and moved my cordless phones into my office where the Magic Jack is and plugged those in to the splitter. Every phone started to work! The only downside I now have both base units for my cell phones in my office, with the remote charging bases around my house. Not a problem, Just more “stuff” in my office plugged in.

I did test the Jack with my Brinks Alarm system and so far it hasn’t worked but I’ve been trying to get Brinks to change the “dial out” phone number that my system publishes so that they know my new number. I can say that the Alarm system WAS dialing out, it just was dialing out and Brinks was receiving a call from a number they didn’t know who the alarm belonged to so the system essentially failed. As soon as Brinks gets my phone info changed I’m going to retest and have confidence it will work.

Over all the Magic Jack really is a great system. I wasn’t sure how it worked but it really seems like a voicemail system when you use it. Yes you have a direct number, but the way you setup your voicemail, etc is remarkably like the voicemail system at my job, which was interesting!

With Magic Jack I paid $39.98 for it at my wal-mart, I got a years service included and each additional year is only $19.95, not bad! It comes with caller id, free local and long distance and voicemail. There may be other features but I don’t need them so I won’t mention them. One thing I do like is if you get a voicemail, it will email a .WAV format file to your email so you can listen to it which is really nice since I use an iPhone and can actually get my home phone voicemails on my cellphone now!

Another thing I like is the portability. We don’t travel much in my house but we do go back and fourth to a few places on occasion and we now have the option to take our home phone with us. Since the Magic Jack only requires an internet connection and a laptop to work you can bring the magic jack, and a laptop anywhere you want, plug into broadband internet and have your home phone number. In todays world with call forwarding, etc that’s really not needed, but it’s nice having the option. Plus if you move no disconnecting and reconnecting phone lines, just move your magic jack and plug it into your internet at your new place. One less utility to remember to move! Just remember to update your 911 info so that should you need to call 911 they have your correct address!!!

The one true downside is that you need to leave a computer running to make and receive calls with the Magic Jack. For me I had a spare laptop so I plugged that in and am using that. Why? Because it allows my Magic Jack to run for at least 30 minutes after a power outage on the laptop battery and then even longer on my external battery backup which powers my cable modem and linksys router. So as long as you take into consideration power outages this really is a great little gizmo that works from what I have seen really well so far!

I’ll update once I get the alarm system tested after Brinks gets my account info updated.

If you want a MagicJack you can get one on Amazon at the following link:

MAGICJACK (from GoFastParts with Free Shipping!)

MAGICJACK (from Infinite-Surplus with Free Shipping!)

*please note, free shipping from the two links above was as of 1/3/2010. This may change at anytime!

****UPDATED 1/5/2010*****

I finally got my Brinks home alarm (Broadview security) information changed and successfully tested my home alarm system using the magicjack! Yep, everything works perfect so I’m one step closer to ditching my comcast home phone service and sticking with the MagicJack with our cellphones as backups!

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