We bought a MagicJack from RadioShack on Sunday for $40. You plug it into a USB port on your computer and then you plug a phone line into the phone jack on the device and presto! You're making calls over the Interwebs. Works really well from what I can tell over the past 24 hours of usage.
We also purchased a new Panasonic cordless phone system so that I could connect the base into the MagicJack (which resides in the basement) and then plug in all four "satellite" telephones in four other rooms of the house. MagicJack now offers 911 Emergency service, so we mainly bought this thing to have a "land line" for the kids to use in an emergency. Up till now, we've just had my cell phone and Angie's cell phone.
I know that if the power goes out, it will take the computer, MagicJack and cordless phones with it, so somewhere down the line I'll pick up a UPS battery and connect all that stuff (including the Comcast cable modem and Belkin router) to it. That might buy us 15-30 minutes of phone time if needed.
You can add an additional 5 years of Magicjack service for $59.95, which I'll probably do after we check it out for a few weeks. If we end up doing that, it means we'll have spent about $100 on this thing for 6 years of phone service. With Verizon regular landline service in Maple Shade, we were spending 100 bucks every 2 1/2 months! And that didn't include long distance!
So far so good.
We also purchased a new Panasonic cordless phone system so that I could connect the base into the MagicJack (which resides in the basement) and then plug in all four "satellite" telephones in four other rooms of the house. MagicJack now offers 911 Emergency service, so we mainly bought this thing to have a "land line" for the kids to use in an emergency. Up till now, we've just had my cell phone and Angie's cell phone.
I know that if the power goes out, it will take the computer, MagicJack and cordless phones with it, so somewhere down the line I'll pick up a UPS battery and connect all that stuff (including the Comcast cable modem and Belkin router) to it. That might buy us 15-30 minutes of phone time if needed.
You can add an additional 5 years of Magicjack service for $59.95, which I'll probably do after we check it out for a few weeks. If we end up doing that, it means we'll have spent about $100 on this thing for 6 years of phone service. With Verizon regular landline service in Maple Shade, we were spending 100 bucks every 2 1/2 months! And that didn't include long distance!
So far so good.
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