Over the last 2 years or so, I’ve paid about $400 so far: The cost of my ooma system (old) and the premier service that adds an extra line and a few other nice bells and whistles. Savings get better over time.
If I had kept AT&T home wire service, I would have paid $25/mo without long distance and fees. $25x12mox2yrs=$600. So I’m far ahead cost wise and those bells and whistles are well worth the bit of effort to move onto ooma.
I’ve had 2 outages that lasted more than a moment or two - when we had a blackout and when my ISP failed to do its bit. Other than that, it has been 100% for our needs.
i really want to get one of these. i live in little rock arkansas. i’ve checked their “porting” page and my current number can’t be ported. they list numbers available in north little rock (which is across the river from LR) but no number in little rock proper. will a number from NLR work?
[QUOTE=cphotodesign, post:11, topic:336666]
I bought one Ooma some time ago here, but I really didnt like it … no numbers available for my area … too many extras … The new Magic Jack sounds like a better deal for $ 69 and no computer needed.
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From what I’ve heard (no pun intended), the quality is not as good as Ooma. Consumer Reports gave Ooma its coveted top rating, although admittedly, the new Magic Jack was not yet available.
BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY … Ooma is free for life. Magic Jack charges an annual fee of $19.95. The free first year that came with the original MagicJack is gone.
AND … Magic Jack is no more than a dongle. All functions require a computer or phone keypad. Ooma is a multifunction unit. For example, it has answering machine functions so you can check messages without lifting your phone. More importantly, you can screen calls through the unit’s speaker. I don’t think there’s any way to screen calls with a MagicJack (unless you attach an answering machine. But that means deactivating voicemail. If you deactivate voicemail, you won’t get email notification or voicemail archiving).
AND … the Telo can now operate wirelessly through WiFi with an optional dongle. MagicJack needs to be plugged into your router or a computer. A bonus feature of this dongle is that your Telo then becomes a wireless hub for other other things. For example, you can plug a printer or computer into the Telo.
I’ve been using Ooma for a couple years and have never had a problem with it. There are several computers in the house, along with 2 roku players, a sqeezebox radio and an xbox 360, and the Ooma doesn’t miss a beat when they’re in use. We have a 30mbps download, 5mbps upload internet plan. I don’t mind paying the $12-13/mos (for premier service + taxes & fees) compared to the $55/mos I was paying verizon. We have call forwarding set to go to a mobile on network outage so it wasn’t that much of an inconvenience when the router died.
The 2nd line is set up in the area code of a relative in another state so she can call and not have to pay long distance. The call blocking feature with the premier service is very good. I like that you can block anonymous calls. It’s become a better deal for us since they added free calls to Canada last month.
While debating buying the Ooma on a prior woot, I read about obi, and wound up buying one. It is great. Obi100 is $44 on amazon and you never have to pay for a phone again! Well, as long as the Google Voice service remains free.
Current set up is great: GV let me pick a number in the area code I want, and I have set it up to ring the home line as well as my wife and my cell ph. All free, after I set it up on my GV acct. Can’t beat it!
I’ve had the old Ooma hub and scout for about two and a half years now with absolutely no trouble at all. I have basic service, not premier and no international plan but still plenty of features. I pay zero per month, zero per year. I used to pay %50 a month to ATT so that equals a savings of $600 a year. I could not be happier with this product and company.
I got one of these two woots ago… the phone quality is great. I also picked up an Ooma Telo Handset for free by prepaying for the Premium services. The handset is great… I have full access to all the features of the Telo Base… with the added benefit of a screen.
The faxing however, still not working. I followed the directions and entered *99 for it to know I was sending a fax and for it to adjust settings, but it still failed. Since that was over the past 2 days, and I don’r send faxes often, I will play with it a little more and see if I have a fix by the next time woot! offers these.
The call quality difference between these is significant. The Ooma comes out ahead hands down. My folks have the majic jack and the quality drop is noticible.
We been using Ooma for close to 8 months now and have no regrets. I have it set up in the basement next to my phone bridge which allows me to have all my 7 phones hooked up to it. About $ 3.50 per month. That saves me about $45 a month. It’s a no brainier.
I don’t know anything about Obi, but I see absolutely no logical reason why you can’t connect 3-4 or many more handsets. Simply buy a cordless phone system with as many handsets as you need. Then plug the base unit into the Telo. As far as Ooma is concerned, only one phone (the base) is plugged in. You’d operate the handsets as you would if the system was connected to a regular landline.
BUT … if your question is whether you can plug in multiple phones (as opposed to handsets), the answer is most likely yes. Simply split the jack into multiple jacks with a splitter. I’ve seen 2 and 3 jack splitters at my Dollar Store. You can plug splitters into splitters for more jacks. See below photo for something more elegant. If you home is already rigged with multiple phone jacks, you can connect one of the jacks to your Ooma and have the signal distributed throughout the wiring. It may be as simple as using a Male-to-Male connector, or maybe you’ll need to play with the wiring a bit. See connectors below.
An issue with landlines and old fashion unpowered phones is the Ringer Equivalency Number (REN). All phones have one. It indicates how much electricity is drawn from the landline jack to power the phones. The sum of the RENs from all your phones cannot exceed the REN rating of your jack. Otherwise, the unpowered phones may not ring or work. This is usually not an issue with modern phones since they generally have their own power supply.
We’ve had ours for 6 months now and I’m satisfied. Only one hiccup in which we could make but not receive call. One call to CS fixed it.
The one downside is that setup was a PITA. Well, one step of the setup was. When I got to the point where I had to call CS to get the number assigned I was supposed to guess the 3-digit exchange to see if there were any available. Apparently the CSR couldn’t look up the available numbers by zip code. We had just moved here from out of state and I barely knew the local area code let alone the exchanges. After about 15 minutes of guessing, he gave up and assigned me a number half-way across the state. So now it’s a long distance call for my next door neighbor to call me. This last step was definitely below expectations.
He’s referring to the Magic Jack Plus, which doesn’t need a computer to work. The original Magic Jack often had poor quality because the computer was busy doing something else. The Plus can be plugged into your router directly, just like the Ooma. According to the Magic Jack Plus webpage, PC Magazine gave it its Editor’s Choice. I still prefer the Ooma though for reasons I stated previously.
It worked great for 2 years. I could fax and calls were crystal clear. Too bad the hardware died after 2 years. The option they presented me was to buy a new device. This has been a complaint on the forums as well for those of us who were enthusiastic first adopters.
If you’re going down this route, I would recommend purchasing the extended warranty to avoid the headaches with a dead device.
I;m too lazy to look at the link but if I’m not mistaken. Magic Jack Plus is actually more expensive over time because there’s a $19.99 annual charge. Ooma is free for life. Assuming the company survives for another 3 years, the price advantage of Ooma over MH+ will kick in then. Plus, Ooma has other features that MJ+ doesn’t, like call screening (which is priceless for me).
[QUOTE=GoSolar, post:7, topic:336666]
If you’re running MJ on a standard PC that has a 300 Watt power supply you’ll be burning up 7.2 kWh of electricity just to have the thing turned on. Multiply times 365 days and you get 2628 kWh for a PC to serve as your phone. Even at the cheap rate of $0.10/kWh here, that’s over $262 just for electricity.
Ooma runs about 12 watts (.288kWh/day) or 105.12 kWh over the year. At 10 cents per, thats only $10.51 in electricity cost annually. WAY better than MJ on a PC.
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Magic Jack Plus doesn’t need a computer to work. But even if it does, your analysis isn’t entirely accurate.
Some of us leave our computer on 24/7, so it’s a non-issue.
A computer rated at 300 watts simply means that it can handle 300 watts max. That doesn’t mean that it’s always drawing 300 watts. Usage is MUCH lower when it’s idle or doing low CPU-intensity things like word processing or email.
If power is an issue, just buy a refurbished netbook running Windows. Some Atom-based netbooks consume about 20-26 watts. The screen can be used as a digital photo frame, or even an Internet info device like the Chumby or Sony Dash.
Every time I see this Woot come up, I highly recommend the device. We got out Telo soon after it launched direct from Ooma at $250. At the time, we were Vonage users and for the first month we ran with both just to be certain that we weren’t making a mistake.
The only mistake was paying Vonage for another month of service! This is a great home VOIP system and while there are less expensive options like the Majic Jack, I’ve not seen one with the features that Ooma offers at the incredibly low prices.
Poke around thier website and check out the things you can do. Got an annyoing caller you don’t want to hear from? Blacklist 'em! Want to have a second phone number for business? Set it up in your account, no additional charge! Tack on a Telo handset and you get an “instant second line” so two phones can use the same Teleo base at the same time! We even had our home alarm system connected to it (loopback at the phone box) before we went wireless with that.
This is hands down the best phone system we’ve owned to date.
