I have been paying ~$60 a month for a Verizon home phone line that I almost never use. I have 2 cell phones that I use most of the time. (iPhones are pretty cool, different post). I really like having a phone line other than my cell phone so I can give that number out to utilities and people who I don’t really want to talk to directly. It seems really silly to pay $60/month just for a voice mail line.

I decided to look around to see what my options were. I saw some adds for MagicJack for $40 a year. Installed it about a month ago and canceled my Verizon account.

I disconnected the Verizon service wires at the box in my garage. I plugged the MJ phone line into a house extension to support all extensions in my house. As a result all the phones in my house will ring as they used to. The caller id box downstairs doesn’t seem to work (not a huge deal). I can answer incoming calls but i had some trouble placing calls from other phones in the house.

Pros:
I get email when i get vmail messages on the MJ telephone number.

Cant beat the price. $40 a year is a not brainer.

Cons:
I didn’t get to keep my existing telephone number. They had to issue me a new number.

The popup you get a start up really sucks. Takes about 2 minutes to go away and it is topmost and cant be moved.

The call quality totally sucks. It is so staticy that the use as an actual phone is totally unacceptable. I will try to attach the MJ USB dongle to another computer in a less noisy part of the house and see if that fixes the static.

The MJ app has exited spontaneously several times. This leaves my house phone not working til i discover it and fix it. The only way to know this is to look at the computer it is running on and check. Or you notice messages going to voice mail when you didnt hear a ring. I tried installing the software update today. We’ll see how that goes.

No Linux support (yet)

Similar:
Skype is good as well for pc to pc calls. I don’t know if you get an actual telephone number with Skype?

Conclusion:

If all you want is voicemail that goes to your email box it certainly does the job. As an actual phone its not so cool. The call quality totally sucks. As I said this might be fixable. The software might be flaky.