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Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

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Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#181

Post by tome »

DominikR wrote: post #30
tome wrote: post #23

The quality of outbound calls to telephones ("Skype Out" I think) has dropped markedly recently. My respondants can't hear me about half the time. The quality seems to come and go by the week.

As someone who works in the VoIP mobile client area for 7 years (though not for Skype) I have to be fair and say that this is unlikely to be Skypes fault. They are known to use state of the art codecs so most likely the issue lies in the PSTN network that you are calling into. For the out calling feature they are relying on Carriers all around the world for the VoIP -> PSTN functionality. It would be another thing if…

That's the thing. VoIP -> VoIP is perfect. They really need to choose better PSTNs in that case.

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#182

Post by Gratsby »

toyg wrote: post #140
agentdrtran wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they? What have the done recently that made Hangouts better?

The first step was disentangling it from G+. I hope the next step is a sane API to let third-party clients integrate with it. It does not have to be XMPP, as long as it's something clear and well-supported.

They treat Hangouts like Yahoo would. Great product that they completely hosed by not caring about the userbase.

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#184

Post by oddvar »

davedx wrote: post #158
xiaoma wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google talk circa 2008 was a lot nicer than Hangouts is now, too. The resource usage was lower, the UI was nicer and it was more responsive. It's really a shame they killed it.

Yet Hangouts is much lower friction and generally easier to use than Skype! What good alternatives are there to Hangouts? Preferably something that doesn't require flaky browser plugins.

There is Matrix (https://matrix.org) - we support messaging and VoIP via WebRTC. Currently we use Freeswitch for conferencing. Check out some clients here: https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#185

Post by anexprogrammer »

nakedrobot2 wrote: post #31

Skype worked far, far better 10 years ago than it does today. From all indications I've seen, Skype is getting dramatically worse all the time. From a personal standpoint, it crashes for me multiple times a day and I can rarely get group calls working on the first try. Often Skype requires a force-quit and then it crashes twice more when it is being restarted. This is on Mac and Android. Fun fact: I have a friend who…

Most things worked far, far better 10 years ago than today. Apparently this is progress.

Social everything means we can't visit a website today without calls to a billion external domains. Phones are doing the same as they're mini-tablets that suck at actual phone calls. Operating systems have taken on mobile centric (and the hideous flatten everything) design that is broken paradigm for a 15" laptop or 24" desktop screen. Firefox was a stripped down, light browser so it stayed fast - now they include more useless garbage than Netscape Communicator ever did. All that crap should be in official plugins so you add pocket only if you want it etc.

Nothing at all is user centric any more, it's all about how much lovely data can be sent back to hundreds of places.

The web is a lot prettier these days to be fair, but I don't call that progress if it's at a cost of a 1TB page load.

I could go on, but you get the idea.. :)

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#186

Post by asuffield »

anon4 wrote: post #154
rdsubhas wrote: post #102

I've been educating as many people (especially Management and Business people) as I can to switch over from Skype to any other alternative (like Hangouts). Because Skype is: * A memory hog * A bandwidth hog (its really inefficient about network usage, and uses a lot of bandwidth even when idle) * Has much lower call quality (a consequence of the above), just try having a call in Hangouts or Skype and notice that Hang…

Skype is shit, but Hangouts is not even a contender * No desktop client * Connected to your google account meaning I'll need to juggle several google accounts to keep my personal and business chats separate Just the fact it doesn't have a native desktop client makes it unusable. I know there are workarounds I can use like nativefier but it's still not as smooth as a desktop app. Running in the browser: - Gets grouped…

(Tedious disclaimer: my opinions only, not representing anybody else or my employer. I work at Google, not on hangouts)

These problems are largely resolved by using chrome. Pop out any tab into its own window, notifications will work reliably, the security model is far stronger, and most important of all: when one tab crashes, it's an independent process so it can't take any other tab with it.

I use this every day without seeing any of these issues.

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#187

Post by antihero »

ahjones wrote: post #163
davedx wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet Hangouts is much lower friction and generally easier to use than Skype! What good alternatives are there to Hangouts? Preferably something that doesn't require flaky browser plugins.

I like Zoom ( http://zoom.us/ ). I used to use Hangouts, but it consumed a lot of CPU. The free Zoom account allows you to have up to fifty people in a room for forty minutes, or an unlimited length call with just two participants.

What's it like on poor connections? What's the quality like?

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#189

Post by [deleted] »

oddvar wrote: post #184
davedx wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet Hangouts is much lower friction and generally easier to use than Skype! What good alternatives are there to Hangouts? Preferably something that doesn't require flaky browser plugins.

There is Matrix ( https://matrix.org ) - we support messaging and VoIP via WebRTC. Currently we use Freeswitch for conferencing. Check out some clients here: https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html

[deleted]

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#190

Post by perlpimp »

rdsubhas wrote: post #102

I've been educating as many people (especially Management and Business people) as I can to switch over from Skype to any other alternative (like Hangouts). Because Skype is: * A memory hog * A bandwidth hog (its really inefficient about network usage, and uses a lot of bandwidth even when idle) * Has much lower call quality (a consequence of the above), just try having a call in Hangouts or Skype and notice that Hang…

altho google hangouts seems better, talking conferencing with a room full of people with mic-speaker setup seems to work better with skype. something to do with AGC and controlling feedback better. maybe hangouts fixed it but it didn't work a year ago.
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