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Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

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Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#371

Post by cshenton »

komali2 wrote: post #262

I bet one hundred dollars that if I tried to login to my old Skype account right now, it would take an hour to figure out how the fuck to reset my password, because"Microsoft account" bullshit. I bet it would take me three hours to make a new account, for the same reason. Try making an account for Microsoft's iot cloud thing. Good luck. Edit: https://youtu.be/lfby-SOWWqQ So, holy shit, somehow it auto populated maybe…

I just had this yesterday. Tried to log in, password forgotten, so went through password reset.

Logged in with new password ‘suspicious activity’ (my failed logins before reset) ‘you now must reset your password.’ WTF, I just did minutes ago!

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#372

Post by Sylamore »

telchar wrote: post #370
sebtoast wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you enabled it (it is by default I believe), the conversations are stored in Outlook. It sucks... but you can still get to them if you have access to Outlook.

When you say "you" here, do you mean "you" or the BOFH somewhere who controls the Exchange server? I stopped opening Lync at work because, among other issues, it wouldn't save conversations and I couldn't figure out how to make it do so.

Most versions of Lync/Skype for Business allow you to keep conversation history locally in Outlook. It's under Skype for Business> tools> options> Personal> check whether you have ticked “save IM conversations in my email Conversation History folder”. It can be disabled by the SfB admins though.

Newer versions do support server side logging to your Outlook mailbox too but it must be configured by the SfB and Exchange admins.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#373

Post by sixothree »

xxs wrote: post #281
badpun wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Skype for business is not even 'skype'. Actually, it's "lync" branded as skype. Overall it's an awful product with hilarious built-in html render that ends in CPU saturation during group chat and a bit of html content. It takes like a minute to close itself if there are 20-30 chats.

Even the executable is still named lync

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#374

Post by sixothree »

flukus wrote: post #339
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…

I must be using a different skype for business then, ours can't even handle copy and paste from the chat window. It will regularly lose messages or send them to the wrong group. Sometimes you'll get a new message notification but the actual message will arrive several second later. It takes several seconds to close the chat window if there are a few conversations open. And that's just the issues we have trying to sen…

I am completely unable to view my message history. And worse I have a missed message notification that refuses to go away. Somewhere along the line I missed a message but there's nothing there to see....

What a piece of garbage.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#375

Post by sixothree »

flukus wrote: post #339
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…

I must be using a different skype for business then, ours can't even handle copy and paste from the chat window. It will regularly lose messages or send them to the wrong group. Sometimes you'll get a new message notification but the actual message will arrive several second later. It takes several seconds to close the chat window if there are a few conversations open. And that's just the issues we have trying to sen…

Oh and whoever decided that Win+F4 is an appropriate shortcut key for Mute Microphone can go fly a freaking kite.

Seriously. On what planet is this ever acceptable. It seems like a sophomore joke.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#376

Post by AlphaSite »

lokedhs wrote: post #359
jngreenlee wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally disagree. I work with HPE (went to Skype around 18 mo ago?) and other large OEMs/software publishers, and collaborating from OUTSIDE the four walls of the Skype-implementing organization has gotten atrocious. Imagine driving on 101 and need to join a call...but you realize it's Skype, so there's not a one-click call-in...you hope that the app will open but first the url opens a webpage...then you authorize op…

Also, when clicking on their "web client", you immediately get a cab file (windows installer file) download request. I'm on Linux. What am I supposed to do with that file? It's like the SfB team still lives in the "everybody uses Windows" mindset of the 90's. The only alternative on Linux is tel.red, which works, but only for an incredibly loose definition of the word "work". I've never used a buggier piece of softwa…

oes Zoom support linux?

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#377

Post by AlphaSite »

Tehchops wrote: post #113
gambiting wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at a large corporation where we use Skype For Business and I swear, this is probably the worst piece of software I have ever used. They can't get basic things right - I can send a message to my coworker right now, and it will appear in the list of messages on his machine somewhere in between past messages. For a while, we had someone who couldn't receive any attachments, skype would just say "failed sending" -…

Yea, based on our experience with SfB I'm frankly a little gobsmacked there are any enterprise clients with an overwhelmingly positive take on their experience. I mean, they tout GE, a company in the middle of an incredibly well documented and historically expensive failure of a transition to a "digital" company. Probably not the best example. You'll have millions of minutes spent in Skype to wave around when getting…

zooooooooooom

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#378

Post by thepumpkin1979 »

bigdubs wrote: post #59
jacquesm wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a direct consequence of Skype going from a peer-to-peer model where the servers were just used during call set-up to a far more centralized model. I stopped using Skype shortly after Microsoft acquired it and started streaming all calls through their DC, I could see no other reason than surveillance for it.

It's actually the other way around. "SuperNodes" (elective service as a kind of hub) caused lots of dropped calls and flaky connections because people were trying to do it on bad home connections. Microsoft switched to centralized servers to _increase_ call quality.

Super nodes where added to mitigate the problem of battery consumption in Skype mobile apps. They explained this a long time ago.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#379

Post by Gustomaximus »

std_throwaway wrote: post #37
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 don't understand how software can get this much worse. Having done absolutely nothing would have left Skype in a better shape than what we have now. What did they do with it? Do they not regression test? Are they letting each new intern add a new feature while nobody really cares about quality? Did they just replace the old software with a new bug-riddled software that's getting pushed out the door without quality…

For the usability/design side, I've seen this happen when you have designers/product manager attached full time to a product that aren't needed. The product is fine but now they have to justify their role ongoing so keep making updates that are simply not needed. Or a new designer is hired and they cant agree the last guy did a great job and do a couple of small tweaks. Because you cant justify a role for a year on that. They have to 'improve it'.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#380

Post by darklajid »

freeone3000 wrote: post #298
magduf wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but I'm still wondering which hotels are these corporate-friendly anti-consumer hotels. I haven't seen any hotels with non-free Wifi, and I've stayed at quite a few different big ones. As for continental breakfast, sure it's not as good as some really good sit-down breakfast restaurant, but it's free and more importantly it's fast: you just go down to the lobby and either eat it there or grab some stuff and take…

Mariott-branded Mariott, such as the Courtyard. DoubleTree by Hilton. Generically, airport hotels.

Stayed at a Courtyard on HongKong just two weeks ago. Wifi was free.
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