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New Skype Update Is Horrible

answers.microsoft.com

301–310 of 334 posts

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#301
post #56
post #7

I have witnessed Skype to go from almost perfect video & chat communicator to absolute crap over almost 10 years, and I feel very sad that it has come to rip off Snapchat. There is no alternative like the old Skype now in the desktop.

discord is pretty good

The inability to use a different ID for different servers pretty much precludes professional use. I don't want to use my handle at work, I don't want to use my real name in random internet communities.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#303
post #169

My worst Skype annoyance was when they seized your purchased credits if your account was left unused for 180 days. As a sporadic user of Skype when I needed to place an international call etc, having purchased credits reset automatically was such a provocation [0]. Every time I have to re-install Skype for some reason, there's always a new regression or dark UX pattern in use. [0] https://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/01…

I had a similar experience: Microsoft deleted all my childhood email because I didn't log into hotmail frequently enough. This included the emails I sent to my first love. And the ones she sent me. All gone. Because Microsoft wanted to save some tiny amount of space. I love Microsoft and an writing this on a Surface device now but Christ, that was awful and would make me think twice about using Microsoft online servi…

I'm surprised by the amount of comments simply stating it's your own damn fault. It seems that for the OP, and for me, that this might have been the very first email that OP had. At a young age most probably. While it's not a given that emails are stored indefinitely for you online - MS didn't exactly warn or spell it out, that it at some point, at its discretion, would simply delete the emails.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it doesn't, or darn well shouldn't. XP put that data in \Documents and Settings\ . Vista and 7 put it in \Users\ , and some stuff in \ProgramData. If you've got user downloads and documents in \Windows (and thus \Windows.old), you're doing something really strange.

You appear to be under the impression that windows.old is a based on the windows folder. It's not.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. This is trivial to google https://www-howtogeek-com.cdn.ampproject.org/ii/w1200/s/www....

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#305
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This included the emails I sent to my first love. And the ones she sent me. All gone. Because Microsoft wanted to save some tiny amount of space. Always backup. Even if it wasn't stupid MS behavior, it could have been a server error.

Not "always backup" but "archive at the end of each year".

So if the service losses your data you lose ONE WHOLE YEAR of data?

No, thanks, always backup regularly -- in real time if possible (e.g. with Time Machine) and then secondary delayed backups (inc. remote locations).

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#306
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.

I'm working in remote Zambia at the moment, in a place which only has a poor satellite connection and WhatsApp has been the only service which allows me to friends and family outside of the country.

I live the UK and have been spoiled with high speed internet. I have been working on around 50kB/s download speed and WhatsApp really shines. Skype sometimes works well, with a much more noticeable delay.

Coming somewhere like this really makes me appreciate small webpage sizes. Hacker News loads much, much quicker than just about any other site I regularly use. Granted it's known for it's light bandwidth size... I've been finding myself slimming my projects down considerably, which a really nice side effect of being somewhere with terrible internet for some time.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#307

Why is there a little smiley in every message bubble? Nothing happens if I click it. Is there any way to downgrade an app on iOS short of restoring a backup? I don't have iTunes (it would be pretty ironic to use iTunes to try to avoid a bad app wouldn't it)

If I tap it I get the option to react with different emoticons to the specific message, similar to iMessage's tapback.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#308
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience: Microsoft deleted all my childhood email because I didn't log into hotmail frequently enough. This included the emails I sent to my first love. And the ones she sent me. All gone. Because Microsoft wanted to save some tiny amount of space. I love Microsoft and an writing this on a Surface device now but Christ, that was awful and would make me think twice about using Microsoft online servi…

It doesn't end there. When you update to a new Windows, the old files from previous Windows installation (i.e. User documents etc.) are stored inside C:/Windows.old folder, and you have around 15 days to save your important file to some other location after which Windows will delete that folder without any notice. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-...

That's exactly why I never keep any important files on system partition. I prefer to keep Windows all by itself on a separate partition, then I don't have to worry about it messing up my things.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#309
post #208
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree. Every version of Skype since 4 has been an exercise in a appalling design choices, in particular on the Mac. Whereas it used to occupy a tiny window listing contacts Skype 5 switched to a large obnoxious screen filling mess. Here is an excellent summary of the mess that is Skype: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/03/30/skype_5/

Much the same on Windows. You used to be able to undock the chat part and have just the contact list showing until you actually started a chat or a call.

You can still do that to the best of my knowledge.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#310

Skype has become horrible long ago when original team sold it. I remember Skype when its binary was several megabytes and there was no Facebook inside. And now it became slow (at least on Windows XP) and buggy - for example I have no notifications sound anymore and it is unable to accept incoming calls. Judging by interface lagginess they have put at least several modern Javascript frameworks inside. And maybe someth…

Are you still using XP? If yes, can I ask why?
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