Dave, when your puter goes down, The MagicJack will record all your voicemails. I've had mine for a couple of months and like Ron said it is awesome. I'm probably going to save about $400.00 a year. Another nice feature is that you can basically talk to anyone in the world for free MagicJack to MagicJack. I have a friend in the Philippinees and I sent her a MagicJack and now we can talk to each other over the phone for free, it doesnt get any better than that. The only down side if there is one is that you can't retain the same phone number that you presently use.