My phone was out of service due to a bad power adapter – my own reluctance to wait on the line and diagnose the problem with my phone company caused me to not have phone service for almost 4 weeks.  Its a statement about how important I deem that legacy landline (actually its Vonage now and no, that’s not my actual phone).  In the end it was only a 15 minute conversation with most of it on hold.  Express shipping and no cost to me and 2 days later my 212 number was back in service.

What I don’t miss is the incessant cold calling around dinner time.  By my annoyed count that was 5 tonight.  I know enough to not automatically answer, but to stop what I’m doing and walk over to the caller ID gets weary that fifth time.

I suppose if it wasn’t one of those times in my life when I absolutely need to see who is calling it wouldn’t be so bad.  I’d just let it ring and not mind it so much.  Which is like the pesky people in our lives – they may not “mean it” and say “it will just be a few minutes, but could you…” and not realize that it just took you 25 or 75 minutes to reach this point in your thought process…

When my phone line was out, I could still get phone messages that callers left via an attachment to my email.  I set it up also to text me on my cell.  I knew which I could delay (forever) and which I should answer sooner based on the phone number.  If only we could shield ourselves similarly with pesky people.  I’m not being rude, just efficient with my time.   I know what I know because I made the time to learn – and they are intruding upon that precious time.

It’s a little device that plugs into the USB port on your XP or Vista computer and on the other end you plug in a standard phone.  Takes about 5 minutes to load the software and register, and you choose a new phone number and then can make unlimited calls.

So far it works really well.  In my opinion its not quite rock solid like an old landline, but its very good voice quality, and there is some latency, but not too long.  If it didn’t work out for me I was thinking of sending this off to a relative so that they can keep in touch with their parents in another state for cheap.

On the packaging it states that you can use this in other countries, and your callers will appear to call you in whichever area code you choose when you register.  The Magic Jack is available at many Radio Shacks or you can order online.  I’ll review more later on after using it for about a month.