My Mother used Magic Jack and hated it. Too many issues to list here but the main one was dropped calls and the phone would actually ring 4 times (on the caller end) before it rang once on the magic jack end. Also it would go into a mode of ringing once and going directly to voice mail.

I have used Vonage before and had no issues, but now I just do cell phones and a cell phone "card" for the computer.

Best of luck,

We use Skpe here in NY on our PC to her Mac, using the Internet to Video Chat with our daughter and grandchildren in England. We bought a Webcam and she has one built into her Apple Laptop.
Hardly a glitch and it is so cool to always see them. The 5 hour time difference is always a mind bender.
It's changed our lives and it's all free. Very Cool!

Wayne,

I truly like the video chat with Skype, especially since I got a Logitech 9000 Pro webcam. This webcam is so good that I've had people watching shadows of the trees outside on the wall behind me. They noticed them, but I didn't!

I bought one as a gift for a friend whom I talk with regularly. It was a refurbished one I got from Newegg, and that's also how I bought mine. Both of us, and a third person who bought one on our recommendation, are very pleased with the results.

The one thing about Skype, right now, is that you can't do multiple video conferencing, but on individual calls, Skype and the Logitech 9000 Pro are wonderful.

Gary

I use Cox cable for internet and HD Tv, and bundled in is Telephone and unlimited Long distacne for a very reasonable price. Until VOIP becomes a tad better i will stick to that. I do Skype with my brother on occasions from Calif to South Carolina, it goes off with out a glicth most of the time. I have had it freeze on occasion.

Yes Gary, we bought the same webcam and it works great! Being in NY and talking to our Daughter and two kids, 4 and 5 years old and they being in England is a dream come true.
Since she uses a Laptop, she carries it with her from room to room and we get to see everything. She even points it out thier glass doors to the yard and we watch our grandchildren playing.
Also the sound is great.
What a blessing it is.

I'm sure one day they will have more than one on one chats with video. But for now this is all we use it for anyway and a phone call just won't cut it after Video Chat. And it's free. The cost of international phone calls is not in our budget.

Wayne,

What you can get from Skype for free is pretty amazing.
We have half a dozen full feature unlimited phone numbers from them (which is a deal in itself), but the regular free features are used day after day, all day long. Conference calls (audio), video calls, file transfers, etc etc
For the free features; it's a no-brainer.

As far as dropped calls go - I drop more cell phone calls up here than skype calls

This post would be for those using satellite high-speed Internet (i.e. Hughes) ...

We are located in back-woods, northern Michigan and so we were forced to use Hughesnet if we wanted high-speed. We tried my son's MajJk on our quadcore (using Hughes satellite) and it was lousy. Hughes says there's always going to be a latency issue with regard to VoIP. So, we're sticking with the cell-phones instead.

Also, I did try a trial version of Skype and I don't know if the latency issues I was experiencing was simply a switch setting somewhere, but I doubt it. I thought it would run the trial version okay (since it claimed to be a full working version) but ultimately got inpatient with it when I couldn't resolve the latency issues and the docs and settings were getting too time-consuming for me. I would like to hear from anyone who's got it to work with satellite Internet though.

I think that is a caveat with satellite. There are extra steps involved in connecting to the internet. The signal has to go up, over, back down to a tower and then to an internet server (and return the same way). DSL uses fiber optics to connect to internet servers after going through a few wired switches, and cable does the same without the added steps of satellite.

There's no internet in the sky (yet), It's all down here... If it seems 'fast' otherwise it is because of good bandwidth; once the connection is made large amounts of data can stream, but for 'realtime' streaming the added steps become more noticable. Also I bet satellite waves aren't quite as fast as light.
Plus if you are up where I think you are, I bet there are a couple relay towers involved.

If you are up in black river, I admire your choice. Very pretty up there.
I built a house for a guy on one of the lakes up there - north of town. You probably saw the crane sticking up through the trees a few years back. The crane I ordered broke down so they sent their brand new one with 300 ft boom. It was HUGE. I went to town to pick something up, and when I started driving back I could see the boom sticking up way above the trees. It looked hilarious to me since it was a small 32' house we were setting, and required only about 10% of that crane's ability. They were worried about scratching the paint on their new crane, trying to get it parked in the trees inside an area I had set up for a crane half that size.

A few locals came out to see what was going on.

I use Magic Jack. It's really great. Only thing is it requires DSL and a computer. Sometimes after the computer's been on for a few days it sounds garbled. No problem. I just re-boot the computer and all is well for a few more days. I bought 5 years worth of service. Usually Magic Jack is $20 a year but, once you install it, they'll offer you a 5 year service for $10 a year. It's great for dealing long distance. I think I can even call Canada with it no charge. If you want to call someone in India it's 5¢ a minute. Not a bad deal.

Great product. I have 3 busy inbound call lines at my business, regular land lines not on Majik Jack. I connected one Majik Jack to one of our computers, plugged in an additional set of 3 wireless phones the one Majik Jack. The main "Majik Jack" phone base is connected to the Majik Jack at computer station #3. The other 2 wireless phones are a stations 1 and 2. We use the Majik Jack to make outbound calls so we do not tie up our incoming call lines that our customers call in on. Of course we can only use one Majik Jack connected phone at a time because they are all on one Majik Jack. Just like you would do at home if you were to buy a set of 3 cordless phones and run them off of on wall jack. Reduced my phone bill/s by around $25 - $40 per month. I believe I got the 2 year plan and will gladly renew when due.
Caveats are not difficult to deal with.
A. Clear you cookies and cache to prevent garbling sounds when you computer runs low on memory which has only happened once since we maintain our computers regularly.
B. Drag the Majik Jack window to the far bottom right corner where it is barely visible (mostly off the screen) so when it pops up each and every time you use it it is out of the way and not bothersome.
C. Can't use it for a fax machine but so what.
I can't think of any other issues or complaints and been using it every work day for well over a year now.
Bought a second one for the house a few months ago. We'll use call farwarding from our main business land line and forward it to the home Majik Jack so my wife can take calls at home and not have to be at our business. This leaves her cell phone available for personal calls without interupting business.
Like I said, Great little gadget. My dad told me about it and had been using it for over a year himself without issues.

Thanks to all for replying. No problems so far with it. I've hooked it up to another computer because I like my main one to sleep when I'm not using it. And if I compared it to a land line, the land line wins.

And on the lighter side, I don't care what you discuss, be it religion, sex, clothes, dirt, toothpicks, politics, etc. There is going to be someone who likes it and someone who don't.

I'll check with my brother to see whether he has Skype or Vonage. He is in Japan, but kept a San Diego number, so we can talk as if we were on domestic cell phones--no charge beyond the monthly fee for either of us. Whichever it is, quality is quite good