hi, i was wondering if anyone has had experiences using the magic jack...i am thinking of getting it as its $20.00 a year..calls to america and canada are free and its cheap to call the UK..seems to good to be true..but if a polic officer uses it it cant be that bad (thats who told me about it)..any views would be appreciated

I've never heard of it so I googled "magic jack". This is the second hit....

http://www.complaintsboard.com/compl...m-c105684.html

You can always believe a polic officer.

By the look of it, it's VOIP. You plug your landline phone into the jack which in turn is plugged into your USB port into your computer.

Only problem i would see with it is that you'd probably need the software and computer running in order to use it which might be a pain.

I've never used it though so only guessing.

Edit: Looking at Novo's link, it also looks a bit shit.

This is what put me off when I looked into it:

Unfortunately this device acts as spyware, it is also almost impossible to remove (it basically becomes part of windows) and if read close enough in the terms of agreement you you agree to allow Don Borislow of YMAX to access information from your computer and sell it third party so really is your identity worth the money you save a year on internet phone service. What sounds too good to be true, usually is...

I use a magic jack and so does my Mom. Also bought one for my sister for her long-distance calls. They're not bad but the reception isn't always great. I'd say for the benefit of saying goodbye to all my telephone bills and for only $19.99 USD a YEAR, I'm happy.

I even called Brazil on it and it was pretty dang good!

Just don't expect the same quality of a landline but hell, you can save a lot of money.

Your computer must be on but what I do is I just leave it on all day and at night my family knows if it's an *emergency* they call my cell.

A colleague of mine in the US uses this, it's a bit unreliable to say the least, plus having to leave a PC on all the time to receive calls... If you're a light user and don't mind having a PC on all the time then I guess it's ok.

I'm a seriously heavy phone user for work, sometimes up to 6 hrs a day on the phone. I use Vonage, which on the whole has been excellent and costs only $19.99 a month for the cheapest plan, or $29.99 for world calling.

My guy in the States uses Vonage but since when did that become available in Canada?

Vonage has been available in Canada since 2004. Pretty sure a friend of mine uses it, and has done for at least a couple of years. He seems very happy with it and has rather low bills. Obviously if your internet connection goes down then you don't have any phone service.

As for Magic Jack, hmm, not convinced by it. I've read a few things that say it's not that great. Plus someone dug into the HTML code on the front page of their site a while back and found the "number of users" ticker thing was just a bit of javascript that incremented the counter and wasn't grabbing actual data from anywhere. If I recall, the owner of Magic Jack got a little uppity about someone doing that.

If it's calls to Canada and the US landlines from your computer you want, I use Google Talk. It's free and calls to the UK are just a few cents.

Wow, I wonder why I've never seen it advertised for Canada. The only ads I've ever seen for Vonage have been for the States. Well I looked it up... $19.99/month for the world plan for the first 3 months and then $29.99/month afterwards... not bad.

http://www.vonage.ca/

I had Magic Jack for about two years and when it was good...but mostly and overall it was bad. I went back to a land line. It is a pity because I was saving a lot of money when I had it.

Just had my sons baseball coach call me via his magic jack and the quality was dreadful, I could only hear one in about three words...

For the amount I use vonage, I highly recommend it. For a light user, you might get away with magic jack, or something like http://www.freephoneline.ca/

I've used MJ and found it not too bad, but if you have an iPhone you could use some of the following-

For calls using wifi or 3G
1. Set up a google talk account then download talkatone app on your iPhone ( free calls to both CAD & USA )
2.download Nettalk app ( free CAD & USA calls )
3. download Icall app ( free CAD & USA calls only allows 3 mins per call )
4. Set up a google voice account ( can be done from out side USA with a little work round ) this is the one I use all the time it's by far the best for free calls to CAD & USA numbers plus allows free SMS you even get a free number but it has to be from your chosen US area code.
For free texts
Down Heywire app ( free texts to Canadian & USA plus other Heywire numbers )