We’ve all seen the commercials for magicJack and is it really to good to be true? Can we really get unlimited phone calls for $20 a year?
So out of curiosity we’ve been testing this innovative gadget and after two days things are looking promising. While this device can be used as a main line we are using the second line of our phone system until we validate things. For the test we are using a simple yet dependable two line AT&T E2562 phone system which uses slave handsets to communicate with the base.
We opened the magicJack box and as promised it installed in three easy steps to a laptop connected to wifi. Here’s what we did -
Within minutes our first call was placed locally on the AT&T phone. Some of our initial minor findings are the following:
- We are currently using wifi to the router so it isn’t a direct connection. The below items may change once we test using RJ45 Cat5 cable (computer network cable) to connect directly from the PC to the router at 100 MB/s.
- Local calls required the full 1 + area code.
- Speaker phone sounds like we are talking through a tin can.
- Calls to cell phone users get a little fuzz.
- Hanging up the phone doesn’t hang up magicJack on the PC immediately but hung up within 5 seconds after phone hung up.
Some additional items we are testing next are –
- Test calls using the speaker phone when laptop is connected directly to router using RJ45 cable vs. Wifi.
- Test calls using a more diversified sample of call types.
- Test calls using PC headset on laptop vs. phone.
- Test the claim that the router needs to be unplugged once a month. The commercial said nothing about this little gem but its not really a show stopper. We’ll investigate more on this and report out on the findings next month.
