I have an alarm system. Will it work with ADP or other alarm systems?

wbelajac wrote:I have an alarm system. Will it work with ADP or other alarm systems?

Read the posts in this forum. It's been addressed, assuming you're wondering about ADT.

zanne101 wrote:If you buy a charger for your car, your cell phones can be recharged even if your electricity is out. Of course, you need to have gas in your car and a decent battery :-}

So very obvious and yet, I didn't think about this solution! Thanks.

However, I was responding to someone who posted that a corded phone does not work when the power goes out. Yes indeed, it does still work. Since we have a land-line and a corded phone we have not had to worry about charging our cell phones. It is not the reason why we HAVE a land-line (though it is why we keep the corded phone around) and it certainly wouldn't hinder me from exploring other options, but since we do have both they come in handy.

jgazin wrote:The fee calculator tells me that this service will cost me only $3.45 a month for unlimited local and U.S long distance service. WooHoo!
But, if you have an old laptop lying around, you can reuse it as a dedicated server to run MagicJack, and get the same service for less than $2.00 a month -- including 911 service.
I'll keep my MagicJack...

You will have to keep that laptop running and 'awake' for 24/7. A 90W laptop will use 788 kilowatt hours per year of electricity if it is on 24/7. At $.10 per kilowatt hour, the electricity will cost you an additional $78 per year. Think about a 90-watt light bulb on all day, every day.

Around our house we've been working hard to lower our electrical footprint. We've managed to drop our electrical usage about 30% over the last two years. The Magic Jack would be eliminated on its power requirements alone.

Bought this on a previous woot, and I've been thrilled with it.

As for extra expenses: We bought a UPS backup for our router so that we always have phone when the power goes out. The only other extra expense was buying the VOIP plan for our alarm system. Since the alarm calls over the phone, it needs to use a different protocol, so we had to buy new equipment for that for $40.

Overall, very happy with this product and with the opportunity to leave Comcast's over-priced phone service behind.

MWPollard wrote:Summary: You can have the arrangement as simple or as complicated as you like and as your needs require.

Thanks for the overview on configurations. I do not yet have an NAS nor that particular router, though the Telo sounds flexible enough to allow multiple ways of setting it up on a home network. My hope is that it is not a hassle and can be fairly streamlined and automated by a novice such as myself, and that directions or tutorials exist somewhere to guide a new user through the process step-by-step. (dream on, perhaps)

johnsonium wrote:Where do you live? Iraq?

Washington state!

I dont know if this was already answered but am I able to keep the number I currently have with my phone company? I dont want to have to switch phone numbers.

avante296 wrote:Check Cosco: $199 + 3 month prem.service, +$50 international calls for free. And the the unit is new. Sorry Woot! hate to do it to you.

Costco is plus local sales tax, which for us in here in the San Fran Bay Area, is 9.25%. I don't make international calls and not interested in the premium service, so the Woot deal is still better....for my anyway.

ltljon wrote:Why would I want this over a $40 Majicjack?

This has been answered over and over again. Please read the thread.

Ringo4422 wrote:Can anyone who already has this tell me if the incoming ring pattern is a "Normal" ring pattern? I had T-Mobile @Home VOIP and not only was the sound quality poor, but the incoming ring pattern was twice as fast as a normal one. Instead of ring..... ring..... ring..... it was ring.. ring.. ring.. etc

I've had T-Mobile @Home for 2.5 years and it works perfectly and there is no out of the ordinary ring pattern.

Springles wrote:I dont know if this was already answered but am I able to keep the number I currently have with my phone company? I dont want to have to switch phone numbers.

Two ways to keep your number
1) upgrade to Premium ooma and the cost of porting your old number is included
2) don't upgrade to Premium, but do pay a $40 one time fee to have the number ported over

cmore.buymore wrote:Costco is plus local sales tax, which for us in here in the San Fran Bay Area, is 9.25%. I don't make international calls and not interested in the premium service, so the Woot deal is still better....for my anyway.

Since Costco will accept returns without receipts, it strikes me that someone with a bent towards larceny could buy a few of these oomas off Woot and then "return" them to Costco for the credit. Difference is about $60/unit, isn't it?...

cyberpunk808 wrote:I have a dumb question. What's the difference between Ooma and MagicJack (other than the cost where MagicJack is $40 for the device and $20/year)

Thanks!

Ooma works independently from your computer. I think magic jack works through your computer and so you must leave it on all the time to make/receive calls.
You just plug the ooma box into your dsl router and instant phone line.
I have the older white box ooma and mine works fine. I didn't pay the $10/month for a second line.. so my phone is free forever. Maybe you have to pay taxes now??? I'm not sure what the $10/month charge is.
I get voice mail, caller id, call waiting, long distance( in the USA) all for free after you buy the box. Everyone I have told about Ooma ended up buying one.

mmccombs wrote:The UPS is a good idea, but may not work for everyone. All my network equipment, including Vonage box and phone, is on a UPS, but when power goes out in my neighborhood, I still lose internet. Something on the cable company's side is apparently losing power.

I'll second that... I UPS all my network equipment. A couple months back a transformer blew up, knocking out power for a couple hundred homes. My equipment was up but Verizon FIOS must have had a switch or whatever that lost power... my fiber feed went dark.

Drinking Frog wrote:Don't count on a cell phone during emergencies. If things are bad enough that the power is out, the cellular towers either will be out or clogged with other calls. I'll always keep a landline, even if it's just a bare bones service. I want a Batphone in the house.

Personally, I keep a telegraph line in the house in case the land line fails. In addition, I keep some wood, matches, and a blanket to make smoke signals in case the telegraph machine goes out.

phacopida wrote:Washington state!

Me too and we don't have power outages very often.

Springles wrote:I dont know if this was already answered but am I able to keep the number I currently have with my phone company? I dont want to have to switch phone numbers.

I'll answer. It has been already answered, several times.

Well... In for one. I'm not up on all the tech stuff, but reading all these comments has been very helpful. I was about to go to Vonage - thanks for the help all.

I have the Ooma purchased refurb from Woot... I do have a problem with dropped calls.... seems to happen when talking on toll-free / business numbers... anyone else have that problem / a fix for it?

Otherwise we like it... haven't tried the fax yet... I hope that works... we have ADT, you need their product called CellGuard if you want to get rid of land line... I have UPS also... we have the Premier service, and I like getting an email with voice messages.

johnsonium wrote:This has been answered over and over again. Please read the thread.

I didn't want to read 5 pages for an answer (you apparently don't know yet wasted your time to school me) & was hoping for someone who did.
Sheesh

Hi,

I have 2 separate phone lines PLUS a phone # with a personalized ring tone, so 3 phone numbers in all.

QUESTION: Will ONE Ooma Telo VoIP Home Phone System support all 3 phone #'s? Is there an monthly or annual service charge to use the Ooma system? How do I know if I need basic or premium service?

I don't have a wired internet connection. I use a Sprint MBB card plugged into a router that serves up the connection to my devices.

Would I have a positive experience? I would love to ditch the local telco!

Bought the previous Woot and 95% satisfied with Oooma.

Operations and voice quality are excellent. Only neg for me: To make an (occasional) international call, you either need to subscribe to a too-expensive calling plan or make a pre-deposit. This is just plain silly -- there's no reason not to charge per-call and include just the charges with the monthly tax / fee billing.

Everyone was drooling over this one last time. I bought the white one. Is this one better? Is there that much difference for me to consider buying this one?

Thanks

Just wanted to mention also for those of you with alarm systems... if you don't have something like CellGuard on your alarm system, all someone has to do to disable your alarm monitoring is cut your outside phone line... so I already had this protection before purchasing the Ooma... also, the refurb looked like a new one, not refurb.

For those who already have T-Mobile cell service, you can get T-Mobile @Home VOIP service for $10/month (around $13 after tax). This includes unlimited local and long distance domestically. We've had this service for 2.5 years and are very happy with it. The quality is perfect and we haven't had any issues with reliability. You don't get some of the whiz-bang features of the Ooma but it does a good job mimicking a land-line phone. Someone will ask why we need a dedicated home phone in the first place. We got the phone to give us a home phone that we can use to lower our need for 'anytime' minutes on our cell plan. Now, between three cell lines we only use about 300 anytime minutes a month. Additionally, it's nice being able to talk on a regular phone at home without having to worry about whether the cell phone is charged etc. I added Google Voice to this service and have the best of both worlds.

That said, I looked into Ooma seriously recently and I liked their offering. If I didn't already have good, cheap VOIP service I would definitely take the plunge.

ltljon wrote:I didn't want to read 5 pages for an answer (you apparently don't know yet wasted your time to school me) & was hoping for someone who did.
Sheesh

I do know since I actually read the thread. Also, there's this little thing called CTRL-F. You could go to each page and do a search for the relevant term.

georges998 wrote:Is it possible to record phone calls on this system? I want to record phone calls and hear them back easily on my computer? Has anyone done that with Ooma? How hard/easy it is do that?

Creepy

ltljon wrote:I didn't want to read 5 pages for an answer (you apparently don't know yet wasted your time to school me) & was hoping for someone who did.
Sheesh

The magic jack can't fax, it requires your computer to be on all the time to work (which costs money and invites hackers (imo).

The OOMA is plain awesomeness. It works like any other household appliance, plug it in and you are set. I have mine on a UPS with my computer and it has never failed me ever. Plus it comes with a great answering machine, free call display and much more.

I have the older hub/scout model which I absolutely love! Again, best purchase I have made in years. Unit paid for itself after 4 months and it has been free (as I have the pre-FCC b.s. system) ever since. So I have saved roughly $700 in the time I have had it and every month I do have it, I save another $50 I would have spent.

I can plug any phone into any phone jack in my house and it works.

I do have FIOS 50mb/50mb internet connection, but I hear it works well on almost any DECENT connection. If you get any quality issues, I'm guessing it is your ISP.

Overall, I have yet to see any product/service anywhere that can even come close to this.

For long distance (outside U.S.) You can send them an OOMA for free calls all the time, or you can use cheap calling cards. I pre-programmed the calling card number into my phone, so I hit one button, wait and then dial who ever I want.

My two cents.

I understand why POTS phones are supposed to be more reliable, but that has not been my experience. I had more outages in 4 years of POTS, then I have had in the last 6 years of Vonage. I'm not sure what it was, but Verizon could barely go a week without something breaking my phone service. And this was in 2 different apartments in 2 different cities. The experience made me hate Verizon for a time (until FIOS came into my neighborhood, now I love them ).

dmax801 wrote:Had a leftover bluetooth dongle, plugged it in and it worked except there's a delay that I find unacceptable. I prefer to not use the oom-BT-iPhone as a way of communicating. Maybe with some tweaking I can figure it out better. I'm not expecting that their proprietary BT dongle would be faster?

So you've had some experience using Ooma with the iPhone,and you used a regular old dongle? In that case, if I buy Premier, I might as well get the handset. Could you tell me more about how your iPhone works with Ooma?

I basically need a 3G extender, but I hate AT&T, so this looks like a good idea. I'm a little fuzzy on how I'd use iPhone-Google Voice-Ooma together. Maybe I should ask the Ooma people. I'm looking for someone to make a sale, here! Any further iPhone-Ooma info appreciated.

-edit- OK I found this:
http://www.ooma.com/support/knowledgebase/ooma-mobile-faq

But still interested in hearing from iPhone users about their personal experience.

jonandabby wrote:Does anyone know of this works with an alarm system?

Most of the time yes. You need to ask the alarm comapany, they usually have a $100 adapter.

renegadetim wrote:Hmm, don't know why nobody else has commented on this... but what the h.ell is with the write up on this one?

Very very strange to me, and a little brokeback-ish.

Maybe it's just me, and the time, but it creeped me out.

Not to mention my name is Tim, maybe that had something to do with it.

Anyways, carry on about the product now...

Personally, I don't even read the write-ups; I feel they are a bit, um, worthless, and aren't worth my time. I jump straight down past the write-up to the product features, then hit the forum to see what the general community consensus is on the product.

mvncpa wrote:Hi,

I have 2 separate phone lines PLUS a phone # with a personalized ring tone, so 3 phone numbers in all.

QUESTION: Will ONE Ooma Telo VoIP Home Phone System support all 3 phone #'s? Is there an monthly or annual service charge to use the Ooma system? How do I know if I need basic or premium service?

You can have up to 9 numbers, but only two lines of calling per Ooma device.

http://www.ooma.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=702&sid=ff52e1da95d7f3eee6d4aed9a0440d4d&start=10

Here is a link to a Ooma forum discussion - DennisP is the Ooma moderator. The conversation was about the old hub, so the talk about "Scouts" wouldn't apply to this device. They talk about daisy chaining Ooma devices to get more lines of calling. I believe you can choose the line you would call out on by dialing * and the number associated with the line like 1-9.

You can port in all your numbers but you will have a monthly bill like this.

Ooma Monthly Tax/Fees $3.47
Premiere service $9.99 for line 2
Number 3 and So on: $4.99.

$18.45 a month for 3 numbers/2 lines.

I'm going to study that discussion because I have an old system with no fees and would like to add a second line with only the $3.47 a month charge and skip the premium features.

It should be mentioned that you can add numbers for $4.99 so your...

1) Kids will call you without long distance (Yes, I'm assuming they don't have a cell with free long distance.)

2) Grandma on a fixed income can call you without getting long distance charges.

3) I'm sure you can come up with other useful ideas to - Like business calls and etc.

sarahjoe wrote:The Duo from Nettalk is also more portable, no computer needed,

Uhh, there is no computer needed for Ooma, either, unless something has changed in the new model.

I'm starting to have deja vu. How many times have they sold this (recently)? 5? 10? 20? 42.789?

teedo757 wrote:Most of the time yes. You need to ask the alarm comapany, they usually have a $100 adapter.

Apparently, it doesn't work with Vector, yet.

johnsonium wrote:Me too and we don't have power outages very often.

Yeah. I live in the epicenter of a two-block area that is prone to power outages. Usually it is only for an hour or two but sometimes it's for days. Anytime you hear on the news that there are still 150 people without power in Kitsap County, you can bet I am one of them. Our power goes out when someone sneezes.

I have six extension phones in my home - bedrooms, family room, kitchen etc.- does this unit only connect to one extension or can it connect centrally to all?