I was doing a search on eBay for magicJack and saw several thin clients for sale that stated they were “magicJack ready”, after browsing them for a bit I bought a used thin client that was set up for magicJack and runs with a Windows XP operating system. The price range for thin clients on eBay vary greatly from $10 to $100 or more, I paid around $60 for mine and it is about the size of my Tucson phone book, it didn’t come with a power cord but that was easy to find on eBay. When I initially set it up I attached a spare monitor, keyboard and mouse, but once that was done I removed all three. I do not know if the cheaper/smaller ones have the right software/operating system to run a magicJack, so I did not take the chance and got one the said it worked with magicJack. These thin clients use flash memory for a hard drive so they do not need any fans in them and they use very little power as compared to my desktop.

Now I can shut down my computer and still have my phone line and if you hook your network devices and the thin client to a backup battery you will still have a phone for a while in a power outage, I have two backup batteries one for my computer and monitor and one for my network devices.

Previously I had been having occasional audio problems when I used my computer at the same time as talking on the magicJack, now so far I have had nothing but perfect connections, I would assume this is because I run nothing else on the thin client, just my magicJack. I feel adding the use of these thin clients is an excellent option rather than running it off your computer.

In regards to security I am still working on getting a basic firewall on the thin client and do not know of any specific security risks associated with the use of the thin client with out it, if I find out more I will add an addendum to this post.

Arizona-Rick