Year 2 - Day 9 - January 9

The Magic Jack.  We've had it installed for a little over a week now.  You've probably seen the commercials promising a year of phone for just 20 bucks.  It's a VOIP system that lets you call anyone (as opposed to Skype, which has some limitations.) So far, here are my thoughts.

Plus:
-They're serious when they say $20 a year - and the first year's cost is bundled with the cost of the dongle, so getting it as a gift meant we could plug it in and use it right away with no credit card involved in the set up. (However, they attempted to add features for additional fees during setup, such as pick your own vanity number.)
-We can call any US (or Canada? I forget, cause I don't call Canada) landline or cell number for free.
-Haven't lost a call yet. We have a 4 handset cordless set from back when we had a land line in the town house.  We plugged the phone line base into the MagicJack and the other handsets are around the house. All good so far - but we do have a new dual band N+ router, so I don't know if that's part of our success or not.
-We haven't had a landline since spring of 2009, so for us it's nice to have an option when the cell service is bad (which is daily here.)
-They say we can plug the dongle into any USB on any computer and bring our number with us. This isn't a huge deal to us, especially since only 2 people have the number!


Minus:
-The desktop computer it's plugged into has to be on, awake, and logged into Mike's side of Windows.  We are not used to having the desktop on all the time since I have a laptop and now we have the ipad.  This is taking getting used to, so for now the phone is pretty much outgoing only because we never remember to turn it on. 
-If the power goes out, it will be useless.
-If the internet goes out, it will be useless.
-We have our address in their 911 service.  We had to click a box promising to change that address if we ever plug the dongle into a computer at another location.  It claims that it THINKS they could communicate our location should we ever have to call 911 from the magicjack but that they can't guarantee it.

Overall, I would not recommend having a MagicJack as your ONLY phone.  If you are already surviving without a landline and would just like something to use to either save cell minutes or if you have lousy cell reception at home, then it's a worthwhile investment for the minimal cost.