DOs AND DON’Ts

Since its invention in the year 2007, Magic Jack has become quite a household name by now. Ask your family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, in fact you can ask anyone who crosses your path and there will hardly be any person who has not heard about this magnificent device. Most of them would already be proud owners and the remaining ones, influenced by others, would be planning to buy the product. But purchasing the Magic Jack USB device is not the end of the story. Although it is a pretty uncomplicated, simple to use device, there are certain precautions which must be taken at all times in order to enjoy the benefits of this product completely.

The most common doubt that the users of this product have is with regards to the issue that whether or not Magic Jack can be directly unplugged from the computer or laptop to which it is connected. The straight answer for this is, NO. This is because the USB device has an in built flash drive which is opened every 3 seconds by the soft phone with write access. So if the device is directly unplugged, this drive will get corrupted. Any damages to the flash drive can lead to the users losing all their contacts (which are stored on the drive). Also, there have been instances when a “Broken Storage” error is encountered. The possibility of its cause has been traced to the immediate removal of the USB device while the soft phone was updating it or before the OS had flushed the cache. Hence it is always advisable to safely remove your Magic Jack USB before unplugging it. 

Similarly, while shutting down the computer or laptop to which the Magic Jack is connected, it is advised to first safely remove the device and then go ahead with the operation. When the device is safely removed and the soft phone is closed, the Magic Jack servers are informed of your offline status. This helps in activating the voice mail immediately, instead of after a few rings. Also if the laptop or computer is shut down with the device still connected to it, it means that next time when you start the system, you will boot with the connected USB device which might cause problems in some systems.

Another major recommendation by the Magic Jack users is to go in for a high power capacity USB hub. The standard USB hubs provide 500ma power. Also, many manufacturers of external hubs and computers skimp on power provided by them. As a result, insufficient power may cause certain handset issues or a poorly designed USB circuit may get burnt out because of too much demand for power. Hence, to avoid such damages one must go in for an external powered hub. In case of a desktop, add in card with more USB ports can be added. Not only will it act as an insurance against any potential damage to the built in ports, but might provide more power as well. 

A Magic Jack device cannot be used with cellular broadband, satellite and muni-wifi. This is because Magic Jack being a voice over internet service is susceptible to latency which all these forms of communication suffer from. Also, dial up internet is again not recommended as it has a speed less than 100kbps (speed that the USB device requires) along with high latency. Although, the device can be used with a cordless phone, but the ones operating at 2.4GHz have been found to interfere with the Wi-Fi network.

By taking into consideration all the precautions mentioned above, you can continue to enjoy uninterrupted services of your own Magic Jack for a long time to come.