How is your call sound quality? I've had two different VoIP services... the first one was spotty (and abruptly closed shop w/o notice a while after I parted company with them in utter frustration), but my current one is quite good... not alway quite Phone Company Quality, but usually at least very very close. On rare occation, I do lose a connection during a long call (1/2 hour or more... not my usual customer-call-length.) And aren't you still somewhat beholden to the Phone Company for your DSL? (I'm on cable Internet.) I am going to look into your phonepower.com... that is a great deal! Paul Bruesch Stillwater, MN On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 4:40 PM, Dean May <deanmay at pianorebuilders.com>wrote: > Greetings all > > > > I've just added a couple of voip (voice over internet protocol) phone > services and thought I'd share with you my experiences. > > > > First, I added a Magic Jack, www.magicjack.com. One end plugs into a USB > port and the other end is an RJ11 jack for a telephone. They advertise it as > costing only $20/year, but with your initial activation, shipping, etc the > first year's cost is around $50 with each succeeding year at $20. Since > activation they have regularly offered 5 more years for $60 which comes to > only $12/year. > > > > It gets you a random phone number (no porting your own number at this > time). A small drawback for me is that it does not have any local numbers > for my area, so my number shows up on caller ID as an Indianapolis exchange. > It was a little buggy to get it working on one computer but they were > helpful with live support. On my other computer it was plug and play with no > problems. > > > > A big plus is the phone dialer. It has a plug in for Outlook that will dial > any contact's phone number with a single click. I also got it to work with > Act! which I just started using. I put a doubler jack into the phone end of > the Magic Jack to allow me to add a short phone cord back to my computer's > modem. This enables me to use the built in dialer in Act! which utilizes the > modem. I did have to slow down the modem dialer a little bit for the MJ > software to keep up. (Choose Properties on My Computer, pick the Hardware > tab, then Device Manager, find your modem in the list, pull up its > properties, then insert this in the advanced tab: S11=100 If that doesn't > work for you find a computer geek and they can make it happen (it's what I > did).) > > > > Another plus is you can use a headset plugged into your computer for hands > free talking. Very nice when scheduling appointments. > > > > Magic Jack is also portable. You can take it on the road with you and plug > it into your laptop and use the hotel's high speed internet access. You'll > have to take a phone with you to plug in as well. > > > > > > But I really wanted to drop the regular phone company with my business line > which was costing $50/month without loosing my business number. So I hooked > up with Phone Power, www.phonepower.com. They are always running different > specials, but I got in on $199 for 2 years of service. With taxes and misc > the total bill was about $250 for 24 months. That is $10.50/month and they > ported my business number. So I keep my number and my vanity toll free > number: 888-DEAN-MAY. It was too easy. > > > > The actual Phone Power hardware is a little box smaller than a router. It > plugs in series between the DSL modem and the router. The box also has RJ11 > ports for telephone lines one and two. Installation was a snap except I got > myself into trouble by getting a couple steps out of sequence. Just follow > the instructions, stupid, and it works. > > > > A very, very cool feature of the Phone Power service is that I actually got > two lines for that price, with automatic roll over. So if the first line is > busy, it will ring line two. And if I'm talking on line one, someone else > can place an independent call on line 2. To get that feature with the phone > company would have doubled my monthly costs to $100/month. > > > > Phone Power has some other very neat features. You can access voice mail > through their web site. Voice mail can also be forwarded to your email as an > attachment. You can also forward all calls to another number, which I do to > my cell phone most of the time. It also keeps a log of all incoming and > outgoing calls. It's a caller ID on steroids. > > > > The one downside by switching my business phone to Phone Power is I'm not > sure yet if I'll still get a single line listing in the Yellow Pages. I > don't rely on Yellow Pages for my business anyway. And I'll enjoy saving > $500/year ($1000 if you count line 2). > > > > Another slight downside to PP (though it won't be for me) is you are > limited to 3000 outgoing minutes/month. Unlimited incoming minutes. I'm not > even close to 3000 outgoing minutes a month so no worries. > > > > And my savings will even be more because long distance is free with both MJ > and Phone Power! > > > > I'll likely keep the MJ just because the phone dialer is so handy when I'm > making calls. It is too cheap to get rid of. > > > > *Dean* > > Dean May cell 812.239.3359 > > PianoRebuilders.com 812.235.5272 > > Terre Haute IN 47802 > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090218/e6e006d9/attachment.html>
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