MagicJack Review

I am sure a lot of you have seen the ads and/or in some store like Radio Shack, Best Buy, ... just to name a few.  Well, I am here to give you my thoughts about this "MagicJack".

It cost me $40 to buy the USB device that also includes 1 year of service. I bought it 2 months ago.  Installation was easy.  I installed it on a dual core machine running Windows 7 RTM.  It does go out to download and install a software that runs on your PC.  I went through the initial setup ... self-information, pick a number, etc.  Now, I live in KS and it did not have my area code, so, I picked one closest to me, which is an 816 area code.  Not all area code is available at that time.  Once I am done with setup, I was ready to make calls.  I tried it two different ways.  One, I connected using wireless.  The call quality was poor.  Now this could very well be because of my wireless connection and has nothing to do with MagicJack.  So, after a couple of days, I switched over to wired networking.  The sound quality was much much better.

I did notice that my PC must be constantly on.  The screen saver cannot be running and/or the PC cannot be in sleep mode.  If the PC is in one of the states, I cannot make and/or receive calls.  This is one small drawback but it is something I can live with.  My PC is hardly ever shut down anyway, so, no problems here.

After a few days, I noticed that I cannot call home.  Every time I call my home, it would immediately go into voice mail.  I checked my connection ( still have internet ), software is up and running, but I still cannot receive calls.  I can pick up my phone and I can dial out.  Once I dial out, I can start receiving calls again.  After a while, it would stop receiving calls again.  This went on for a while.  Finally, I "chatted" with customer service and I was told that since I am using Windows 7, which is NOT a supported OS, he cannot help me.  So, I packed it all up and returned it to Radio Shack.

Now, overall, I was happy with the sound quality.  The reason I returned it is because I cannot call my home, if and when I need to.  So, if your intention is to use it purely for making calls, then I would recommend it.  Give it a shot.  Otherwise, go elsewhere.

Installing Microsoft IIS in Windows 7

First thing is to make sure that you are not using Windows 7 Home Edition. It is my understanding that Microsoft IIS does not come with it. Second, make sure you have the Windows 7 DVD handy ( you may need it during installation ).

1. Go to Start > Control Panel > Programs and Features.
2. Click on Turn Windows features on or off. 
3. When another dialog box that contains a list of many Windows relates services appear, check the box for 'Internet Information Services (IIS)'.  Leave all the default installation settings intact ( unless you want additional services .. like FTP, etc ).
4. Click OK.  Installation will start.  It may prompt you for the Windows 7 DVD.

Once installation is complete, you may go to Administrative Tools > Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager and you may configure your web site from there.  I also notice that you can have more than 1 website.  This option was not available in Windows XP.  I am not sure about Vista.

Anyhow, there you go.

Windows 7 - Update

I am not an early adopter, especially when it comes to technology.  However, I have been so impressed with Windows 7, I have upgraded both my laptop as well as my home/work desktop toWindows 7.  It seems to me that Windows 7 is just that much better than Vista.  If I were to compare it to XP, I personally think Win 7 is just slightly better. 

It is stable.  I have a lot of software installed on these machines, Visual Studio, VirtualBox, accounting software, Adobe products, just to name a few.  And they all work.  Driver support is awesome.  I no longer have to install the software that came with the HP printer that I have.

The AeroPeek feature is nice.  What I like the most is the ability to snap the active window to the left and/or right of your screen by simply holding down the Window key and pressing either the left arrow key / right arrow key.  I believe that these Winkey combinations is new for Windows 7.  Here's a short list of Winkey combinations:

Win+Up arrow	Maximize current active window
Win+Down arrow	Minimize current active window
Win+Left arrow	Snap current active window to left
Win+Right arrow	Snap current active window to right
Win+Home	Minimize / restore window
Win+T	Focus the first taskbar entry Pressing again will cycle through them, you can can arrow around. Win+Shift+T cycles backwards.
Win+Home	Minimize / restore window

If there are others that you have used and found useful, please let me know.

Cloning a Virtual Harddrive - VirtualBox

I use VirtualBox to allow me to run multiple OS on one machine. It is a powerful virtualization product, with rich features. It is an Open Source Software. It runs on Windows, and supports all of Windows OS'es, Linux, Solaris, OpenBSD, just to name a few.

One feature that I use a lot is the cloning feature. Here's what I do.

1. Create a new virtual machine

2. Create a new virtual hard drive ( this will be my template )

3. Install the OS ( Windows XP Pro, for example )

4. Update the OS with the latest patches, etc.

5. Install any additional software necessary

Once complete, I open up a command prompt and navigate to the VirtualBox folder. I type the following command and then hit Enter:

VBoxManage clonehd "sourceTemplate.vdi" "newCloneDisk.vdi"

You will replace the VDI names in quotes with the path and filename where the source is located and where you want it to clone to. It will do it's thing and will return to the command prompt once it completes.

I then return to VirtualBox and do the following steps:

1. Create a new virtual machine

2. Here, I would select an existing virtual harddisk, in this case, I would select the newly cloned VDI.

I also found that there is another way of cloning. I have not yet tried this out myself ( I will try this the next time I need to clone ) but here it is anyway.

First copy the VDI file ( or your template ) using Windows Explorer. Name the copy to what you want. Open up a command prompt and navigate to the VirtualBox folder. Type:

VBoxManage internalcommands setvdiuuid "newCloneDisk.vdi"

You will replace the VDI names in quotes with the path and filename where you want the new VDI to clone to.

I hope this helps. If someone has already used the second option, please let me know how you like it, if you ran into any issues, etc. Thanks.

UPDATE: The second option works and it is a whole lot faster to complete.