Mine arrived today. $20 for entire year of VOIP. No monthly bills. It needs a laptop and ordinary phone unlike vonage.
Voice is bit flattening but that could be due to my laptop setting. For $20 its more than bargained for. Check out www.magicjack.com
Update : Jan 23 10:30 AM PST
I am trying it for nearly 1week. So here is my review.
(+)1. Simple to use. Plug magicjack into your USB. Connect your phone to magicjack and start dialing. Your mom or pop dont have to fiddle anything with the computer. They have to pick up the phone and start dialing the US number - not even +1 country code is needed. Make sure to tell them not to dial 911.
(-)2. Voice is flat. It doesnt have cellphone quality. You will miss the experience but still I would say you to stick for the reason - i dont find a difference in voice quality as too big for me to put off, my each call takes 1hour to 2hours to complete (I still dont have a girlfriend!! ), savings are huge - Rs400/$20 per year with magicjack when compared to Rs400/$20 for every 2months
(|) 3. Your quality depends upon few factors. Quality of magicjack, quality of cordless phone. Things improves a lot if you use good phone. If you want to use cordless phone use DECT technology or 5.4Ghz cordless. Ordinary cordless which operate on 2.4Ghz which is the same frequency of your Wifi router.
(-)4. The supplied VOIP program is crap. There is constant keyboard polling. So you will hear click sounds in calls. Solution is to minimize the program to system tray. Its a 2 step process. You select minimize to tray option from menu and then click on top right (-) minimize button.
I am sending one to my parents this week. IMHO its definitely worth more than $20 but dont get your expectations high!
We are already working to setup a uni-mobil system using bluetooth, grandcentral , magicjack and ever-present cellphone. Welcome Phone2.0
