Please tag advertisements with [AD]. Personally, I think this ad is of such a general nature that it isn't suitable for the piclist, even tagged correctly. It's very close to being spam... -Adam On 8/20/08, Funny NYPD wrote: > Own a US phone number no matter where you live at a low cost, say, $19.95/year? > That's a technical dream I had before. Now it is possible with magicJack, an US innovation and worldwide telephone revolution.. > > > magicJackhas been a quite release since the early of 2008, and it has been a hot topic on many US technique magazines (PC magazine, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, etc.). Public medium (CBS, CNBC, etc.) also have been giving good words and high expectations for this new telephone revolution since its first release. Some people even call it a skype killer. I personally disagree with that. But if you consider it a Vonage Killer, that probably is true for ease of use, good voice quality and much, much lower price (its annual fee is about 2/3rd of one month Vonage bill). > > For the great voice quality and the ultra-low price (it annual fee is about 2/3rd of my local monthly phone bill here in Massachusetts USA), we do think it worth a try, especially for people outside of USA/Canada but having customers in the north American. > > We have been evaluating the magicJack for quite sometime. And we have become authorized magicJack independent reseller since July of 2008. Here are some interesting features and some minor issues we have found. > > What is magicJack: > The magicJack is an American telephone invention based on the VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) technology. With magicJack, now it is possible to carry your phone number with you anywhere in the world if only there is a high-speed internet and a computer available. What you simply need is : > a)a computer, > b)a high speed Internet connection, such as: dsl, cable Internet, wifi, etc. > c)a magicJack USB device > d)and a regular phone (optional). > A regular telephone device can be connected to the magicJack USB device and a US phone call can be made just as usual. It also can be switched to a microphone and PC speaker if a regular phone is temperately not available. > > For more detail please visit magicJack web site (there are many videos from the inventor and medium too): > http://www.magicjack.com/ > > More info is also available at this forum post: > http://www.edaboard.com/viewtopic.php?p=1068389#1068389 > > Summary of benefit for American and Canadian users: > > 1. Low annual phone bill cost, US$19.95/year, first year initial costs (including USB hardware and 1 year service): US$39.95+handling & shipping. > 2. Free phone calls to/from USA and Canada. Talk for free... day or night, seven days a week. > 3. Free Caller ID, free Caller waiting, free phone forward service, free voice mail, free voice email. > 4. Take the magicJack with you when you travel to other countries. Call back to the U.S. and Canada for free. > 5. Pass on the savings by sending a magicJack to friends, business partners, and family around the world and they too can have their very own U.S. area code. > 6. 911 and 411 service are available. > > Summary of benefit for oversea users: > > 1. Get a USA and Canada (available soon) phone number at low cost. > 2. And you can select a USA phone number with area code from many popular US cities regardless of where you live. > 3. Receive USA and Canada phone calls even when you are outside of USA and Canada. > 4. Unlimited free phone calls to USA and Canada no matter where you are. > 5. Unlimited free magicJack to magicJack phone calls avoiding local phone bill and national-wide long-distance bill. > > Technically, the magicJack USB device is a single chip USB-based microprocessor/microcontroller design. A single chip handles USB communication, computer drive simulation (working for both XP and Vista), phone signal generating/handling, voice compressing and decoding, etc. It seems working pretty well, no noise, no echo, etc. What a great design. > > It is recommended not to put this device in a USB hub, however we are doing it all the time because our laptops only get two USB ports most of the time. We didn't use external power USB hub, but do think that will work too. > > Some minor issues we found: > 1. We do find that the magicJack USB device conflicts with the Mentor Graphics software (with USB dongles installed) on our laptops. The magicJack still works, the Mentor Graphics software stop working because it cannot synchronize with its USB hardware dongle anymore. After uninstall all Mentor Graphics software and reinstall it, everything back to normal. So it can be fixed just by re-install the Mentor Graphics software. > 2. The magicJack takes drive F: and G:, if you have a network drive named F: or G:, you better unmounted those two drive and re-name to some other drive names, on our case we have a network F: drive, which makes the magicJack cannot claim itself as a F: drive. So at first, it doesn't work at all. After we removed our network drive and remount the network drive as P: drive, the magicJack now works after a reboot. > 3.Because of the F: drive issue, per magicJack customer support request, we downloaded the newest magicJack installation package from its web site, and installed the PC software from hard drive. So software installation from magicJack USB device is not fully tested. Since you can always downloaded the latest version of the software from its web, we don't consider this a big issue at all. > > Other than that, everything else works like a charm. We made long distance calls to other places of USA and Canada, and no long-distance phone bill like before. This is great. > > We do see people bring it to mainland China for the Olympics games, and reported it working fine too. They can call US or receive phones calls from US for free when they are traveling in China. > > > For US and Canada customer, you can order directly from magicJack web site. Or you can order from us for relatively faster order process. > For international customers, you can have your friends/relatives order one for you, or simply order from us: > http://www.auelectronics.com/Service-magicJack.htm. > > Funny N. > Au Group Electronics, New Bedford, MA, http://www.AuElectronics.com > > > > > -- > http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive > View/change your membership options at > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist > -- EARTH DAY 2008 Tuesday April 22 Save Money * Save Oil * Save Lives * Save the Planet http://www.driveslowly.org -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist