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Can anyone provide me with the positive and negative aspects of utilizing Magic Jack in Costa Rica? My understanding is, the device can be used to make and receive calls in Costa Rica, for a flat monthly or yearly fee. My understanding is also, your computer must remain on 24/7. Any information would be greatly appreciated.
You have the essential facts correct, DV. The magicJack attaches to any USB port on your computer (PC or iMac) and provides you a universal port to which you can attach any telephone instrument. You can use a typical wired phone or a wireless multi-handpiece one. If you go wireless, the phone base must be what’s attached to the magicJack.
Once you’ve set up the magicJack, you can make unlimited calls to any phone in the U.S. or Canada for the flat annual fee ($20) and there’s some means (we’ve never tried it) to make other international calls.
magicJack will give you the option of selecting the U.S. Area Code where your incoming U.S. number will originate. That’s the number family and friends would call to reach you in Costa Rica or wherever your PC or iMac is connected to the Internet. It could be China.
You’ll also have to provide some street address (they don’t check) to satisfy their 911 service which, of course, you will never use. We made one up.
In order to use your magicJack, your computer must be turned on and connected to the Internet. Incoming calls will cause your magicJack phone to ring. If you don’t answer or aren’t connected to the Internet, magicJack will take a voice message and send it to your e-mail address as an attachment. You can listen right from within the e-mail.
But beware . . . When we listen to a voice mail message, it’s actually downloaded to our music library! So when we “sync” our iPod to the iMac, the magicJack voice mail messages come, too. It’s disturbing to be listening to music and suddenly have a familiar voice break in with what might be a months-old message. So clean ’em up.
When we bought ours, the magicJack cost $40 which included the first year of service. Subsequent years are $20 (unless it’s gone up) or we could buy five years for $70 and guarantee the rate. That’s what we did.
On occasion, maybe when there has been a lot of traffic over our Internet provider’s network, we’ve had signal interruptions, but generally the service has been just fine.
all of these programs are only as good as your internet connection and latency rate. i’m using MagicTalk, and i also use Skype, but both of them break up on occasion.
There are other options like the one from Net2Phone (https://partner.net2phone.com/partnersupport/products/innomediaxt/default.asp). This plugs into your network and you can plug a regular phone to it. Plus you can get both a toll free US number, plus a local number for most major cities in North America. Very convenient if family want to call you without incurring long distance charges and without jumping onto a computer for Skype or Google Talk. I prefer it because I don’t need to keep a computer running and can use it with a cordless phone. There’s a guy selling these options from Multiplaza Escazu at the cellular store near the Casio Store on the first level. I use this for my business and my home.
We use the Vonage system which also allows for us to plug in our regular cordless phone. It has all the “bells and whistles” features such as voicemail and voicemail to email. It is more expensive than the others @ $32.00 per month.
As pointed out in another post, our internet signal has been weak lately so our reception has been spotty. However this phone option has really made it possible for us to live so far from family!
[quote=”Scott”]Why would you use that when you can use Googlephone for free?[/quote]
Google phone/voice is free to call USA and Canada phone numbers only for the rest of 2011. Any numbers beside USA and Canada, there is a charge. By 2012, all calls will not be free…of course, unless Google keep it the way it is(free).
[quote=”Disabled Veteran”]Can anyone provide me with the positive and negative aspects of utilizing Magic Jack in Costa Rica? My understanding is, the device can be used to make and receive calls in Costa Rica, for a flat monthly or yearly fee. My understanding is also, your computer must remain on 24/7. Any information would be greatly appreciated.[/quote]
We use Skype at a rate of $6.99/month unlimited to the states. The reception is sometimes spotty and you need to be connected to your computer. Otherwise we don’t have any problems with it and we can also do video calls for birthdays and such.
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