Magic Jack

With the Magic Jack internet phone device, you will never have to pay a monthly phone bill again. For under 50 bucks you can purchase the magic jack device and have a year's worth of local and long distance calling to the United States and Canada. If you have friends and family that you call often in other countries you can send them a magic jack and you can call back and forth for free as well. The company also includes free voicemail, three-way calling, call forwarding and call waiting. The phone number they assign to you is free also. This phone number will not be listed in any public phone directories. You can also register your number in the National Do Not Call Registry.

The Magic Jack is easy to install as well. It literally only takes a few minutes. All you have to do is plug in the device to your computer's usb port and it will do the rest. It does download some software so that you can use it on your computer. Once that is finished and your softphone screen appears, plug it into any landline phone that you have and start making calls. Any corded or cordless phone will work, except the old style rotary phones. Actually, they can work also, but you have to use the softphone screen for dialing. Magic Jack works with XP and Vista on your PC and Macs if they have an Intel-based processor.

If you do not want to use one of your computer's usb ports you may use an external usb hub. Make sure it is an a/c powered usb hub for best results.

You do need a high speed internet connection to use this money saving voip phone system such as broadband, DSL, wi-fi, fios, wimax or wireless broadband internet. Magic Jack cannot be used with dial-up or satellite internet connections. Your computer must be on and have a live internet connection to make or receive calls. However, if your computer is off or your magic jack is unplugged, your call will go to voice mail. You can forward your calls to another number and then have your computer turned off and you will still receive those calls.

Sometimes people do have problems in getting the magic jack to work well for them. Much of the time, this is from differences in computers that the company has no control over. Different programs may conflict in getting it to work properly for you.