By Gordon Meyer

P3GizmoGuy@gmail.com

Phone expenses, especially when you’re on location, can quickly become a big expense.  I found a very cool way of dealing with this through of all things an infomercial.   But it’s one that really delivers on its promises.  Meet the MagicJack (www.magicjack.com).

This is a palm-sized gizmo that attaches to the USB 2.0 port of any Windows PC or Intel-based Mac.  As long as your computer is online with a high speed Internet connection, you can plug any standard land line phone into the MagicJack and you’re off and running with unlimited local and domestic long distance calls, directory assistance, voice mail, call waiting and caller ID.   They even offer a free conference call service, which is way cool in my book.

As for voice mail, they don’t just email you a notification that you’ve got a voice mail in your in-box, they email you a WAV file with the voice message itself.  Nice!

$40 buys you the MagicJack itself and your first year of unlimited service.  After that, it’s only $20 a year.  Want international calling? They offer very competitive rates like France (where my brother lives) for about 2 cents a minute calling to land lines.

It gets better though.  Because the MagicJack is such a compact little gizmo, you can take it on the road with you and use it anywhere in the world that you can get a broadband signal.  I selected a Beverly Hills phone number for my MagicJack. 

Windows and Mac software are already pre-loaded on the MagicJack and self-install on your computer the first time you use it.  This took several minutes on my computer, but it’s pretty much a one time operation.  Once it’s set up, including the selection of a phone number in what ever major city and state in the US that you want, it’s pretty transparent to use.  Plus you can use it anywhere in the world that has high speed Internet.

The next time I go visit my brother in Paris, I can take my MagicJack with me and either attach it to the USB port of his computer or to my own laptop and make free phone calls back to the US.  The people I call will see my Beverly Hills phone number on their caller ID and can call me at that number, even though I’m halfway around the world.  If the computer is off, it just goes to voice mail.  There’s even an option to automatically forward incoming calls to the phone number of your choice, like your cell or office.

Sound quality is clean and comparable to what I used to experience with Vonage, which uses a similar VoIP (Voice over IP) technology.

You do have to connect a regular telephone to the MagicJack, which is potentially cumbersome on location.  And it will only work when the computer it’s connected to is on and online.  But for $20 a year, it’s a great way to take your phone with you without worrying about per minute charges or lost cell signals. 

And if you’re someone who travels abroad, it can save you a huge amount of money compared to the price of international roaming on your cell or even pre-paid international phone cards.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, September 6th, 2009 at 12:15 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.