Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#241

Post by ntsplnkv2 » Thu, May 10, 2018, 6:41 PM UTC

pidg wrote: post #190

eksemplar wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skype for business is absolutely excellent though. We run it as the sole phone service for more than 10.000 employees and it’s the best we’ve ever had software wise. Further than that I can find, chat with or call my counterparts from our neighboring municipalities as though they were from our own. We also frequently use it for video meetings on our Microsoft surface (or whatever that 80” touch screen thing is called…

Absolutely! I was reading these replies and thinking nothing made sense. Didn't realise there were companies trying to use consumer Skype for their corporate calls. We have SfB handling everything at work - including PSTN - and it works fabulously all the time.

This has not been my experience with SfB

From "robot voice" to poor sound quality to randomly dropped calls, to screen shares not working, have been a daily occurrence for me.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#242

Post by avodonosov » Thu, May 10, 2018, 6:42 PM UTC

mnkypete wrote: post #4

Um.. I'm not sure the article author is familiar with the fact that "Skype for business" (the "complex" one) is actually home grown and was just rebranded from Lync. This is not at all the same as the consumer Skype, which actually tries to be a weird mixup between Snapchat and whatnot at the moment (failing utterly of course). Skype for Business (+ PSTN calling) is actually pretty great on Office 365 tbh...

Except it often doesnt work

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#243

Post by jacquesm » Thu, May 10, 2018, 6:44 PM UTC

tinus_hn wrote: post #151

Someone1234 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's widespread speculation that they moved away from P2P because it made it harder for the NSA to wiretap, which the NSA gained the ability to do right before the acquisition[0]. Keep in mind I did say speculation, but the NSA definitely seems to have gained increase ease at wiretapping Skype in early 2011 which is also when Microsoft was negotiating/purchasing Skype. From [0]: > "Sustained Skype collection began…

Direct connections for audio or video calls are a patented ‘invention’ that is why the major vendors like Microsoft and also Apple changed to server based communication.

There were a number of patent trolls that tried to milk this but if I could resist them then certainly so could the likes of Microsoft. This is definitely not the reason for the switch. See also: https://jacquesmattheij.com/my-brush-with-a-patent-troll

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#244

Post by Retroity » Thu, May 10, 2018, 6:45 PM UTC

andreygrehov wrote: post #171

What are some good Skype alternatives?

Discord is pretty alright. It has most of the features that I want (Video calling, search, server administration, etc) and the "gaming" features are pretty easy to ignore.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#245

Post by burntwater » Thu, May 10, 2018, 6:45 PM UTC

braythwayt wrote: post #229

magduf wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you specify which hotels are the ones that cater to people on expense accounts please? I've never heard this, but it makes sense and I'd like to avoid those hotels.

It used to be that you could apply "The Coffee Test:" When I started my career, the hotels that gave you free coffee (either in the room, or in the lobby) catered to people paying their own way. The hotels that made you call room service and order a $6 cup of instant, plus tip... They catered to corporations. Nowadays almost everyone has some kind of instant coffee machine in the room. It could be that free WiFi is t…

Wifi and continental breakfast. At cheaper hotels, both will often be free.

In an interesting twist, while a free continental breakfast will often be significantly lower quality than a paid higher-end breakfast, I've found that the free wifi is almost always significantly better than the paid wifi.

In fact, many business hotels have tiered wifi plans. And they all suck, even their most expensive plans will be worse than the Motel 8 down the street.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#246

Post by badpun » Thu, May 10, 2018, 6:49 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #220

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>their needs are subordinate to the needs of the individuals and departments who are actually paying for it. Are you implying people are paying for dropped calls and poor performance as a feature?

The people experiencing dropped calls aren't the people who made the purchasing decision. The people experiencing poor performance don't have a say in the matter and are required to use the tool, and the people who made the purchasing decision are getting what they want out of the deal.

In case of my company (a 40k employees multinational), everybody gets to suffer from Skype for Business' ridiculousness, I'm guessing even the people who bought it (heck, I'm guessing even the CEO is cursing it on a regular basis). Still, we use it.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#247

Post by badpun » Thu, May 10, 2018, 6:54 PM UTC

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #241

pidg wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely! I was reading these replies and thinking nothing made sense. Didn't realise there were companies trying to use consumer Skype for their corporate calls. We have SfB handling everything at work - including PSTN - and it works fabulously all the time.

This has not been my experience with SfB From "robot voice" to poor sound quality to randomly dropped calls, to screen shares not working, have been a daily occurrence for me.

Add random crashes, windows not refreshing until you restart the app, app being slow as hell in general or my personal favorite - the "feature" that if you unmute your microphone within first couple seconds of joining the call, you're dropped from it (it's 100% repeatable across the whole company I work in).

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#248

Post by petepete » Thu, May 10, 2018, 6:58 PM UTC

Jun8 wrote: post #5

"Since acquiring Skype from private equity investors, Microsoft has refocused the online calling service on the corporate market, a change that has made Skype less intuitive and harder to use ..." This is absolutely not the bulk of the problem: simply put, the call quality is horrendous and dropping calls in the middle of the meeting is quite common. Modus operandi in most Skype conference calls in our company is to…

I recently moved to Skype from Hangouts and Skype's call quality is miles better, we've barely had a dropped call (that isn't caused by a cat who likes to sit on the keyboard) and overall I'm incredibly impressed.

The only annoying thing is that web.skype.com doesn't work in Firefox.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#249

Post by ComputerGuru » Thu, May 10, 2018, 7:01 PM UTC

Skype hasn’t ever (with people I know) been “beloved,” merely tolerated as the only option back when it really was, well, the only option.

Today, Skype’s voice quality is as bad as it was 15 years ago but even the cheapest alternatives from 3rd party cross-platform vendors easily put it to shame (such as voip.ms) and free offerings from the big names (Google’s Voice, WhatsApp audio, Apple’s FaceTime Audio, etc) also do the same if you’re willing to deal with network lock-in or privacy issues.

Skype video chat is basically unusable: the latency multiplier is horrendous and the video quality is at best subpar and extremelyhorriblt noisy.

The client itself is a mess. Ugly, bloated, difficult to navigate, constantly changing, buggy, and more. It’s been that way since the redesign years before MS bought them out (Skype “Classic” was the last “OK” release on that end).

What’s to love, exactly?

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#250

Post by detritus » Thu, May 10, 2018, 7:06 PM UTC

ivraatiems wrote: post #25

Consumer Skype isn't just awful for calling, it's also awful as even a basic chat client now. Recent mobile updates have made it much, much harder to use and began prioritizing a SnapChat-style "stories" feature that nobody asked for or wanted, because there's already an app for that called SnapChat. I switched from Skype to Discord, as did pretty much everyone I know. It has all the same features Skype used to have…

I recently moved onto Discord from Skype to keep in contact with a couple of people I work with. It's ok, but has some really irritating quirks, from updating too frequently, with a fiddly-to-hide loading screen that likes to sit on top of all my other windows, to locking out the scrollbar on my browser intermittently (!) to the most egregious of all (for me): not allowing me to copy and paste text from Adobe Illustrator as, I guess, it doesn't know how to trim all the formatting and just give me the raw text.

Given this last point is much of what I use IM for (confirming copy with partners, etc), it's highly infuriating. I think I'm going to be looking for another IM app again soon... .