Well, as a technical person and a natural skeptic, I was very skeptical when I heard about this new product that would give you what amounts to free telephone service using your PC and high-speed Internet connection.

Unlike services such as Vonage, Magicjack is a small USB device that plugs into your PC. Plug in a phone, sign up for a number and hey-presto, you have phone service. The cost of the device is about $40 which includes the first year's service. After that it's $20 a year.

Sound too good to be true?

We thought we'd give it a try. A neighbor actually recommended it when it came up in conversation. Turns out she'd been using it for a while and we'd not noticed any call quality issues when speaking to her. So, in these trying economic times we thought "what the heck..."

The reviews online are mixed. Some good, some bad. Some call it a great invention. Some call it a scam.

Our Magicjack arrived and we plugged it in. The software was all on the device already. After a reboot, the registration screen came up, we picked a local telephone number, hooked up one of our existing handsets...and got a dial tone. So far so good.

We called several people, both locally and long-distance and have been experimenting for the past week. So far, the product seems to work as promised. We're getting local and long-distance phone service for less than $2 a month. Our Magicjack is hooked up to a PC that is connected to our high-speed router by a wireless connection so we figured we'd suffer a little for, but on the whole, it's been surprisingly good.

There have been a couple of "crackles" on the line and a fad in and out once or twice. It's certainly not the 100% clear, crisp sound you expect from a phone service, but you can hear and be heard clearly and you don't have to strain your hearing or guess who you're talking to.

The setup program registered our address for 911 calls and that was it. We tried the free voicemail and gave up. At least from our perspective, the Voice-over-IP (VOIP) quality just wasn't up to it, so we'll stick with an ansering machine for now.

But it's pretty cool. You can take it with you when you move about - quite handy. The only thing is that your PC has to be on when you use the device.

But, for $20 a year, so far it's living up to its promise. I'll update this review in a few weeks as we progress with our testing. We've still got our main home number active. I suppose the true test would be to have that disconnected...Anyway for this price, it's a good cheap second number for now.

www.MagicJack.com

Have a good one!