anyone tried Voice over IP for their phone?

TJB21 said:

My father bought me magicjack about a year ago. $40 for initial purchase item and 1yr service, $20 a year after that. Several people I know use skype, but hate it as they get horrible reception when someone is on a cell phone. Do not know if this is a skype issue or what. However, Magicjack has served me well enough that I am more than happy to renew next year and to the point I have discontinued my land line.

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The prob.. with MJ, is it has to be hooked to your system. I have been looking at http://www.nettalk.com any users??

Fightingpiper said:

I was looking into Vonage as an alternative to my phone. Has anyone used them and if so what have been your results?

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I used VOIP for five years as my main phone. At times it was my ONLY phone.

Worked just as good (if not better) than any other phone.

Only drawbacks:

1. You cannot use it with a fax machine (at least I couldn't with Packet8)
2. If your internet goes down for some reason (modem gets messed up, router resets itself, etc...) your phone goes down with it.

Other than those two things it was perfect. I used it in France, Sweden, the US, and five different states and twenty different apartments in the U.S.

Now I have a reliable cell phone and I don't need to be paying two bills.

Edward78 said:

The prob.. with MJ, is it has to be hooked to your system. I have been looking at http://www.nettalk.com any users??

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It takes up a USB slot and you can even hookup a phone to it or use your headset with mic. However the magicjack itself is probably 2inch long and 1inch high with even an optional extender of about 3inches that allows you not to block 2 usb slots if they are close together. A usb hub is also an option. The hinderance is slight, in my humble opinion, for a product that has worked perfectly.

holy thread resurrection batman, this ones nearly as old as me!

that being said, my little brother has a 2g iphone he runs skype on on the wifi. the phone is not connected to any carrier so its his only means of communication. kind of hard to get a hold of him sometimes (has to be in a wifi area to receive a call) but for the 60 bucks a year or whatever he pays it works for him. i guess you can look at it as a home phone with some mobile capabilities.

whooping_a_panda said:

holy thread resurrection batman, this ones nearly as old as me!

that being said, my little brother has a 2g iphone he runs skype on on the wifi. the phone is not connected to any carrier so its his only means of communication. kind of hard to get a hold of him sometimes (has to be in a wifi area to receive a call) but for the 60 bucks a year or whatever he pays it works for him. i guess you can look at it as a home phone with some mobile capabilities.

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$60 a year, to bad Skype just has a app. & no standalone hardware.

I've been using Vonage for years now and don't have any complaints. I was starting to worry at the ever rising cost over the time I've had it but they just fixed that with the $9.99 online plan. You get a ton of features like call waiting, forwarding and all that but I only really use the caller ID. The online voicemail is pretty cool as well but I don't really use it. I didn't sign up for the features, only the cost as you can see.

I'm not sure of what hardware they give you now but I was given a Linksys router with two phone jacks that has worked great as a router for all my machines and the phone service.

I would never have it personally however that goes back to the only having a 3mb net connection that gets well saturated from netflix and steam,ect. I do however have a few friends in other areas with vonage and it isnt too bad until they are swamping down their connections at that point you definately notice a big difference. However in all fairness it could be fixed via QoS or TCP Vegas andi have seen atleast one dsl modem/router combo that now comes with QoS options

7 years, three apartments, two houses, and two kids latter, I'm still rocking the Vonage without any complaints.

darkknight187 said:

I would never have it personally however that goes back to the only having a 3mb net connection that gets well saturated from netflix and steam,ect. I do however have a few friends in other areas with vonage and it isnt too bad until they are swamping down their connections at that point you definately notice a big difference. However in all fairness it could be fixed via QoS or TCP Vegas andi have seen atleast one dsl modem/router combo that now comes with QoS options

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I'm kind of curious to what you mean here. I have been using it for years and done everything from netflix and game while the wife is on the phone never had a slow down or complaints on the phone quality. Maybe it is their hardware?