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New Skype Update Is Horrible

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Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#71

Post by owaislone »

crb wrote: post #52
scrollaway wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have high hopes for Discord video, which is coming out soon. Knowing the discord team and seeing the quality of the voice product, I'm finally going to be able to replace god-awful Google Hangouts.

What's god-awful about Hangouts, and does the new Hangouts Meet make things better? https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/meet-the-new-enterp...

Hangouts is a good piece of tech and the has a great UX with minimal UI. The only issues with hangouts are that:

1. It is a resource hog. Laptops spit fire when they run hangouts for more than 10 minutes 2. It can be buggy and unreliable. Almost every 3rd hangout meeting, someone on my team is unable to hear others or is unable to use the mic. Fix can range anything between restarting the computer to killing audio processes.

In my experience, it is much less reliable on OS X than Linux.

If they manage to make it reliable and reduce resource usage, it'll be the perfect video conference app.

Also, it doesn't currently work on firefox which is a pain.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#72

Post by rb808 »

Meekro wrote: post #10

What could I switch to (on both Mac and PC) that would give me better video chat functionality? Edit: Just to clarify, here's what I'm looking for: 1. Free plan; available everywhere in the world (I have family outside the US). 2. Both Mac and PC clients that are actually good. 3. Video chat quality (including noise filtering and such) that matches or exceeds what Skype can do. 4. IM-like client that supports text, v…

viber is great, is popular in Europe, I dont know why more Americans dont use it.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#73

Post by thecupisblue »

Disclaimer: I'm 24. I'm into tech. I am on instagram 24/7. Snapchat less and less.

This update actually made me open skype and talk to people. Skype became terrible, but this update interested me and now I'm actually using it for first time in months. The design is pretty straightforward and satisfying. Could be better, but this is a huge improvement over what they had. Don't know why they put in stories tho.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#74

Post by api »

sgt wrote: post #48
api wrote: post #39

Video chat and IP telephony apps seem like some kind of software lemon market. There's some kind of perverse incentive operating here. Even ones that start out nice inevitably degrade over time. FaceTime used to be nice if you were all Apple, but when they removed P2P it went to crap. The performance got terrible. Lately I've been using appear.in, which works if you have a webrtc browser or you use the app. It works…

I don't know. FaceTime is my go to choice for video calls, and I use it almost daily. I wouldn't say the performance is terrible, and it doesn't spin up my MBP's fans like Google Hangouts does in the browser.

Hangouts is another one that's gotten awful.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#75

Post by MichaelApproved »

spooneybarger wrote: post #54
necessity wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are better alternatives in terms of call quality? Hangouts is pretty bad and WhatsApp is awful in my experience. Despite the bloat and the UI Skype is still the only good experience I had.

zoom

Best part about Zoom and similar programs is that you don't have to deal with the horrible Skype search feature for everyone in the call before starting it. Why can't people find me by my username? Who knows. Why don't I see people online even though I know they are already, forcing both of us to message each other before we can start a call? Who knows.

With Zoom and other conference programs, callers just join the call (after they've downloaded the program which admittedly is an initial pain point).

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#76

Post by CharlesW »

necessity wrote: post #38
rynop wrote: post #8

You could totally remove "New" and "Update" from that sentence and it would still be a very true statement. * Full disclosure: my co. was acquired and forced to use office suite.

What are better alternatives in terms of call quality? Hangouts is pretty bad and WhatsApp is awful in my experience. Despite the bloat and the UI Skype is still the only good experience I had.

> What are better alternatives in terms of call quality?

What I'll call "automatic transmission" VoIP solutions are all very similar in terms of quality. That said, there are absolutely things you can do to improve VoIP call quality and reliability: https://book.pod.guru/voip-secrets/

Beyond typical consumer/business VoIP, there are professional solutions like Source-Connect Now and ipDTL. They support selectable bitrates that go beyond what popular consumer/business solutions typically support, with commensurably better quality.

For highest quality, the solution is a "multi-ender". In a multi-ender, audio is recorded uncompressed (or losslessly compressed) at every end, then merged/sync'd after the call for a result that can sound as if everyone was in the same room. WebRTC-powered services like Zencastr, Ringr, Cast and Cleanfeed can help automate multi-enders.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#79

Post by rubatuga »

Seriously, skype is not a social media platform, so stop trying to make it one Microsoft! Skype is a standard video/voice chat/conferencing that has found its place in everywhere from gaming to professional meetings, so what you’re doing here is diluting your target market.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#80

Post by rubatuga »

thecupisblue wrote: post #73

Disclaimer: I'm 24. I'm into tech. I am on instagram 24/7. Snapchat less and less. This update actually made me open skype and talk to people. Skype became terrible, but this update interested me and now I'm actually using it for first time in months. The design is pretty straightforward and satisfying. Could be better, but this is a huge improvement over what they had. Don't know why they put in stories tho.

Satisfying UI? That’s not the problem here
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