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Re: undefined

#151

Post by vultour »

chx wrote: post #97

No one is talking of chat logs. My Skype logs with my brother are incredibly important and go back several years as we live on separate continents but pretty close nonetheless. This would be horrible -- if I hadn't switched to Windows 10 thanks to Windows Subsystem for Linux. If you do the same, here's how I set up, hopefully helpful to converts like me: https://github.com/chx/chx.github.io/wiki/How-I-set-up-my-Wi...

But do you really need them? I also swear by keeping all my chat logs, and would get very upset if I lost my WhatsApp / iMessage conversations, however on the other hand I cannot recall a single instance where I needed to find something that was older than a week.

Re: undefined

#152

Post by sofaofthedamned »

tracker1 wrote: post #146
sofaofthedamned wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I worked there even people at Cisco hated WebEx.our team used hangouts instead.

For a while, I really loved hangouts... but Google has kind of dropped the ball, pulling out some of the integrated features (SMS, and Google Voice integration), and/or obfuscating those features. It used to be far easier to actually use for most of your communications. I also really preferred the integrated comms, so that I could keep hangouts and sms messages from a single contact together.

Totally agree.

Re: undefined

#154

Post by makecheck »

While I am generally a fan of open-source anyway, few things scream the need for good open-source solutions more than chat programs. I can’t even count on one hand the number of promising clients that have been utterly destroyed by companies over the years.

Enough already. One of the huge values of open code, in addition to being able to contribute and fix bugs, is that you can go back 6 months and fork from the point before $STUPID_FEATURE was added that broke everything. For Skype in particular, they have systematically destroyed this product on multiple platforms in many ways over a period of years.

Re: undefined

#155

Post by jannes »

stryk wrote: post #55
pgaddict wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't agree more. We've been using Skype for internal communication for a very long time. Back then it was the only option that worked on all the OSes we need (Linux, Windows, Mac), had all the features, and it just worked. But the Electron app is just damn terrible. The message layout is super inefficient - it can display maybe half the messages compared to the native client. If you click somewhere, it un-expec…

What reliable alternatives would you suggest?

TeamSpeak https://www.teamspeak.com/

Re: undefined

#156

Post by micampe »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #41
hawski wrote: post #37

I was wondering what to use for video calls with my father. He has a mobile core 2 duo machine (one of Dell's micro desktop PCs). Skype stopped working as stated in the title. I went with Facebook Messenger on Firefox, but video from his camera is very jerky. It looks like it hangs for a 1s every 1.5s. For me it's an indication of a performance problem - video is converted to a WebRTC friendly format and it's slow. I…

I want a dedicated hand-held that does video, and can lock the screen while maintaining video input and output. I have a 16 month old kid; she has grandparents who are in various stages of decline, from "knees and back hurt a little" to "fairly advanced Alzheimers", and with various levels of computer expertise at the best of times. I want to send each of them a tablet that someone configures once to be on wifi, and…

This is still vaporware but it sounds interesting https://www.joinloop.com

Re: undefined

#157

Post by imron »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #137
imron wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and can lock the screen while maintaining video input and output. Although not quite what you're looking for, I wrote a program for macOS and Windows [0] that locks keyboard and mouse input, specifically so I could have my kids in front of my computer for video calls without worrying about them hitting keys and messing things up. 0: https://www.imralsoftware.com/kamlock

How do you unlock it when you're done?

With a keyboard combination.

Re: undefined

#158

Post by pgaddict »

eric_the_read wrote: post #140
btym wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you need all the stuff skype supported originally - chat, voice, video, screen sharing etc. then I don't have a solution I'm afraid, particularly if you need support for various operating systems. Google Hangouts.

My experience with Hangouts is that the screen resolution is incredibly low for a very long time, and it's super-laggy on big updates (switching virtual desktops, etc.). While appear.in is still somewhat laggy, and occasionally requires one or more participants to quit and re-join, its screen sharing is much better.

I've actually used hangouts at the previous company (so roughly 2012-2015 or so), and it worked fine I guess. I don't remember what were the reasons not to use it instead of Skype, but I'm sure there were some.

But I guess we don't really need the video calls that much (After all, who'd want to see video of engineers working mostly from home, right?) and the ability to self-host and integrate Mattermost with the issue tracker etc. is quite neat.

Re: undefined

#159

Post by chx »

vultour wrote: post #151
chx wrote: post #97

No one is talking of chat logs. My Skype logs with my brother are incredibly important and go back several years as we live on separate continents but pretty close nonetheless. This would be horrible -- if I hadn't switched to Windows 10 thanks to Windows Subsystem for Linux. If you do the same, here's how I set up, hopefully helpful to converts like me: https://github.com/chx/chx.github.io/wiki/How-I-set-up-my-Wi...

But do you really need them? I also swear by keeping all my chat logs, and would get very upset if I lost my WhatsApp / iMessage conversations, however on the other hand I cannot recall a single instance where I needed to find something that was older than a week.

As claudius mentions, it's a simple SQLite database and yes I do search it, every 2-3 months we need some nugget from years and years ago.

Re: undefined

#160

Post by JupiterMoon »

colanderman wrote: post #38
mediaserf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Due to instability and memory/race condition issues with the new sykpe app, I've been using Pidgin and the skypeweb plugin: https://github.com/EionRobb/skype4pidgin/tree/master/skypewe... This works well for me since most of my skype traffic is chats, but I have to load the new skype app for calls.

Nitpick, I assume by "race condition" you mean "used lots of CPU". This is a common colloquial conflation, but race conditions [1] (which are not generally identifiable without aid of a debugger and the application's source code) and high CPU usage are unrelated concepts. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_condition

> which are not generally identifiable without aid of a debugger and the application's source code

Random behavior is usually an indication that there may very likely be a race condition without needing the source code.

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