Over-Seas

I love the telephone. By telephone, I’m talking about the landline type and not the cellphone. In fact, I think that it’s sad that people don’t use it so much anymore, given the fact that almost everybody communicates through a cellphone or their laptop, via the Internet. However, there is something now that has brought together the old and the new – the Magic Jack.

It really is quite amazing. It is a device that is plugged into a USB port of a computer and the other side is connected to a standard landline telephone unit. Once the program is installed, you dial through the computer and talk through the handset of the phone. To use technical terms, it is a computer peripheral that in combination with telephony service, provides Internet-based telephone service to the United States and Canada.

For my mom, this is the coolest invention. She’s the least technologically savvy in the family but she was able to work this out because 7 of her 8 siblings live abroad. With this, she can talk to them all she wants for a much lower price that if she uses the usual telephone services. The distance never really bothered although the cost used to put a bit of a damper on things. But that sure has changed, with the help of a little magic(jack).