magicJack and magicJack Plus Support, Reviews, FAQs and Tricks

Peabody · MagicJack Newbie Joined: 18 Jul 2009 Posts: 4

According to a recent interview with the "inventor":

"The magicJack was not designed to plug into the router. One of the main benefits of the magicJack is its portability. By being able to plug into the USB slot, our customers can take it anywhere in the world and use it with any broadband-enabled computer. If it were designed to work with a router, the magicJack would lose its portability."

If he isn't "inventive" enough to design a portable interface that does not need to be directly connected to a running computer 24x7 then by all means he can hire me and I can do it for him in a weekend. Here's a few tips:

1. Flash and forget. Allow the magic jack to be programmed via USB exactly as it is now. Once flashed it will work on that network. Next add a $0.40 ethernet controller chip and port for communication to the device, and move the power source from the +5V USB to an external 5V 110-240V AC adapter.This complete setup would add about 1.5cm to the width of the device but mean that I could set it up in my house and forget about it. It would ALWAYS WORK. It could REPLACE my phone service. Taking it on the road? Pop it into the USB port at the next destination and flash it to the new location. Same as you'd have to do to use it again right? Except now I can TURN OFF MY LAPTOP OR TAKE IT ON THE ROAD without it tied to a phone... and the phone still works! AMAZING! For some reason all these hotels I keep staying it have an RJ-45 Network connection AND wireless... wouldn't you know it, every "portable computer" since 2000 has had built-in "wireless" capability. EVERYTHING WORKS!

This is something no more complicated that the base for a cordless phone with two lines. One RJ45 to the wall, and on RJ 11 to the phone programmed by USB. MAGIC!

2. Remote programming. Add a simple arm processor to this device and a micro-kernel Linux. This has added development time, but an added feature. You can use it ANYWHERE THERE IS A NETWORK CONNECTION. Not a network connection + computer. MORE PORTABLE! Now I can plug my magic jack into ANY (Windows, Mac, Linux) computer via ethernet for the first time to initialize it, like anyone would do when they buy a new router, and create my account using a simple web interface. Then the device could be connected to the network, sense it's configuration via the magic of dhcp, and contact the magic jack servers to download whatever configuration files it needed and voila, MAGIC! Now I can simply take my magic jack anywhere in the world, plug it into the hotel ethernet jack, unplug the hotel phone from the wall and plug it into the magic jack and voila! IN MY POCKET PORTABLE. No laptop required.

3. Leave it as it is. Portable-ish.. but only for Windows users with a laptop. Got a desktop? Magic Jack is no longer portable. Use Linux? Magic Jack no longer works. Want to turn your computer off? Magic Jack no longer works.

The reason I'm really upset about abandoning the idea of a standalone version is the energy cost. Both standalone options allow you to actually use the phone when when your computer is turned off. That's why it is called "standalone". According to the US Dept of Energy The average Residence pays 11.59 cents per kilowatt hour. Computer power supplies typically range from 450W to well over 2000W so we'll figure, 500W to be on the very low side and make the math easy. Each hour you are using half a kilowatt, so it's 5.8 cents. 24 hours a day is $1.39. 30 Days in the month.. $41.76. Most PCs range closer to the 800W power supplies, which is closer to $66.75 a month in electricity. Political issues of environmental abuse and energy dependence on foreign oil aside, that's added around $50 a MONTH to the tab of the MagicJack. Can I afford to pay an extra $50 up front to design the thing RIGHT? Because I'm looking at the spec for USB, and it seems this device runs off 5V at ~500mA. That's a whopping 2.5W, working out to $0.21 a MONTH in electricity. Why am I paying $66.75 a month when it only needs 21 cents?

Because the "inventor" couldn't "invent" a way to design his electronics to not crutch off dozens of lines of windows code executed on an inefficient x86 processor despite a world of specialized processors and cross-platform code to do this all energy efficiently, keep the entire system built-in to the device, and deliver it at a far lesser cost to the user.

Maybe this guy should spend his money on further improving the product he's selling, instead of marketing it. I love the idea, access a nationwide voip network for $19.95 a year. Unfortunately, the "inventor" took that idea and hired an amateur product development team to design his "magic jack".

The ideal product is definitely number 2, no question. If he would even open up his framework so that independent
developers could design 3rd party devices for his network. Hobbyists like myself could even design a better alternative for using the MJ network, and MJ still gets paid the access fees.

Option 1 is super cheap, easy to implement from the currently designed model, and there's plenty of room to markup an extra profit. So maybe the inventor of magic jack should rethink this whole notion that his USB-only design is perfectly suited to the market.

pagemen · Posted: Sat Jul 18, 2009 3:38 am Post subject:

Sorry but do you know that there is sth. called ATA(analog telephone adapter)?

Peabody · MagicJack Newbie Joined: 18 Jul 2009 Posts: 4

magicJack and magicJack Plus Support, Reviews, FAQs and Tricks

Which standalone version would you like to see?