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Amazon Chime

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Re: Amazon Chime

#271
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use uberconference (nothing to do with Uber!) in North America and Europe (multiple countries) and it works like a charm.

I guess like every option mentioned here they all suck for someone. We have used Uberconference and the audio quality is terrible. And it's not uniformly terrible either which is even more frustrating. Some of the attendees won't be able to understand some people and other attendees everything sounds fine (although it always sounds like a poor quality cellphone conversation). With Google Hangouts we have poor quality…

I'm secretary for an org. We're trying to use uberconference for our executive board meetings. I like that remotes can call into conference bridge via phone.

I bought a SABRA bluetooth thingie for the room. Seems to work well.

Our results are mixed. We test out the conf room before the meeting starts. Good to go. Then weird stuff happens. People being muted. Their icon shows them talking, but no sound. People being dropped.

I don't mind the unreliability so much. 7 laws of networking and so forth.

I frikkin hate that I don't know what's broken, so can't hope to fix it. Especially DURING the frikkin meeting.

Re: Amazon Chime

#272

The first (and personally the only) requirement I have with any chat system is that it should _not_ modify the text I enter in any way - especially if I am pasting something. Sometimes I have to paste a line or two of code, or a few lines of a stack trace. Sometimes I have to paste a string which contains some particular set of characters. Microsoft Lync absolutely destroys the pasted text. It subtly converts the dou…

Few years ago I've used few lines of code that I've copied from Skype. There was a hidden invisible chracter that was breaking everything, I've lost about 2 hours until I found it through a hex editor (I rewrote the pasted code and wasn't expecting for that character to be there). That character was not a part of the original message, but it was added by Skype.

Re: Amazon Chime

#273

The first (and personally the only) requirement I have with any chat system is that it should _not_ modify the text I enter in any way - especially if I am pasting something. Sometimes I have to paste a line or two of code, or a few lines of a stack trace. Sometimes I have to paste a string which contains some particular set of characters. Microsoft Lync absolutely destroys the pasted text. It subtly converts the dou…

Microsoft had a much better chat before:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Comic_Chat

Re: Amazon Chime

#274
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoom seems to be a lot better for pricing. At a company of 12 people, our GoToMeeting bill was $15,000/yr. But uhh, call-in rates of 1c/min/participant? That's going to add up. We would regularly have meetings of two hour duration (programming, planning) with up to six-eight attending is a $10 meeting in itself. Chicken feed compared to salaries but I could easily see pricing of up to $1k/mo with this. Shame.

> At a company of 12 people, our GoToMeeting bill was $15,000/yr. Am curious how? I think it's like max $50 a person/month, and that's only for huge meetings.

Actually, I appreciate the heads up... I wonder if we're still on "older" plans that are more expensive (I don't run the billing but I do get to listen to the complaints about the cost). Because yeah, at the current plans we should be seeing a max of $7k/yr.

Re: Amazon Chime

#275

Enterprise conferencing software is so bad and so expensive I'm astonished it took this long for a decent competitor to come in. I'm really surprised Google didn't go all in with making Hangouts a decent competitor. I have a feeling this will make a lot of money.

I've used Google Hangouts at my last two companies. Overall, it worked pretty well.

Re: Amazon Chime

#276

The first (and personally the only) requirement I have with any chat system is that it should _not_ modify the text I enter in any way - especially if I am pasting something. Sometimes I have to paste a line or two of code, or a few lines of a stack trace. Sometimes I have to paste a string which contains some particular set of characters. Microsoft Lync absolutely destroys the pasted text. It subtly converts the dou…

Lync is by far the worst I have experienced.

Re: Amazon Chime

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe claims of perfection were made. Merely claims of a standard of excellence.

And I wouldn't say standard of excellence--just the possibility of excellence. With closed source you can't have even that. You pretty much have to assume the worst.

Honest question: how do you feel about Google's security history?

Re: Amazon Chime

#278

This is really cool but I wish they had more details on the Chat part of the solution. What does it look like? Can you theme it? Does it have any integrations (ala Slack)? Can you have inline pictures? Does it have a rich message API?

More importantly, does it support GIFs?

It does not. Just tried it. Displays as a static image, even when you open it in the chat window.

Re: Amazon Chime

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of my customers are located in a different city than the one I live and work in. You'd think videoconferencing would be perfect for someone like me. But no, once or twice a month I rent a car and drive ~225km to meet with them personally. I supplement these in-person meetings with phone calls. I'm not sure I've ever had a videoconference call go perfectly smoothly, and I found that these kinds of calls added all…

Do you think a video wall would help? I often wonder if it is the size of the screen that makes people feel 'distant' when using video conferencing. Super high def full wall screen, so they can see every hair on your head with minimal lag -- I think this would work, the only thing they'd miss was a handshake.

Why do members of an online conference need to be seen at all? What is the benefit of adding video instead of just using audio -- y'know, the medium by which actually information is exchanged?

Re: Amazon Chime

#280

I'm definitely going to try this (even though unusable for us because of missing Linux support). We have currently settled on Zoom and it's okay, they do have Linux support. One problem I have with all video conferencing solutions we've tried (same for my colleagues, all Mac or Linux users, sadly no Windows users to compare) is high CPU usage. I have a 2015 MacBook Pro and when I share my screen CPU usage skyrockets…

I wonder if it's a function of what you're sharing? I use zoom with PowerPoint and Keynote all the time and have never had my fans spin up when sharing. Haven't noticed it sharing Safari or my whole desktop either...

As a test I'm currently on a video+computer audio+full screen sharing zoom, and my overall CPU load is at <20%, with Zoom accounting for about half of that.

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