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Stop using Zoom, Hamburg’s data protection agency warns state government

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Re: Stop using Zoom, Hamburg’s data protection agency warns state government

#71

It would be nice if Teams weren't yet another Electron disaster.

And instead of improving their code so Teams is fast as VS Code, they delegated it to the Edge team to write a new version of Electron called WebView2.

Teams' codebase is apparently so bad that it's not fixable and they need to rely on others to rewrite the runtime for them.

For good measure it also subscribes to the media keys on the keyboard. To mute your microphone you might think, but no, to play the dial tone twice when pressing play/pause for your music! Very useful, thank you Microsoft.

Re: Stop using Zoom, Hamburg’s data protection agency warns state government

#72
post #11

Offer a comparable alternative, then. I spend half my day on meetings either internally or with clients, and every time I have to jump on a client meeting with Microsoft Teams/Google Hangouts/WebEx/GotoMeeting because their company bans Zoom, it's a recipe for a fruitless meeting. Someone will fumble the sharing controls; screens will take forever to present; at least one person's microphone will become inaudible, st…

As someone who runs Zoom via the browser (they do deploy a dark pattern to discourage this behavior but there is no good reason to trust them) I find that Hangouts and Teams are both solid alternatives in terms of AV quality. Would be happy to see some actual data on this claim. People prefer the interface they are used to. I personally find Zoom to be really frustrating from an interface angle but that is probably j…

Perhaps I am jaded, but as of yet I have never used a browser-based video chat that worked well. Invariably connection issues arise which I have only rarely experienced with Zoom. My best explanation is that a native app has more to work with in terms of codecs and connection management than a browser can offer.

So to this end, that "dark" pattern is ultimately to a user's benefit and they are truly better off if they use the native app. If Zoom did not do this, they would pay the cost in terms of support and perceptions that the service is not reliable, in much the same way that Hangouts is unusable.

Having said that, you should be able to acknowledge that you do want to use the browser and don't want to see the pattern again.

Re: Stop using Zoom, Hamburg’s data protection agency warns state government

#73

Offer a comparable alternative, then. I spend half my day on meetings either internally or with clients, and every time I have to jump on a client meeting with Microsoft Teams/Google Hangouts/WebEx/GotoMeeting because their company bans Zoom, it's a recipe for a fruitless meeting. Someone will fumble the sharing controls; screens will take forever to present; at least one person's microphone will become inaudible, st…

I never have issues with Hangouts. I think Zoom is a slightly better experience, but just making a Calendar invite in Google Calendar, and it automatically having the Hangout meeting is pretty nice.

[Edit] Google Meet

Re: Stop using Zoom, Hamburg’s data protection agency warns state government

#74

Offer a comparable alternative, then. I spend half my day on meetings either internally or with clients, and every time I have to jump on a client meeting with Microsoft Teams/Google Hangouts/WebEx/GotoMeeting because their company bans Zoom, it's a recipe for a fruitless meeting. Someone will fumble the sharing controls; screens will take forever to present; at least one person's microphone will become inaudible, st…

I've seen this argument used many times against GDPR regulations.

Who are obligated to provide an alternative? And why?

It's not like the police is obligated to give drug abusers something in return for the drugs that they are confiscating.

Re: Stop using Zoom, Hamburg’s data protection agency warns state government

#76

Offer a comparable alternative, then. I spend half my day on meetings either internally or with clients, and every time I have to jump on a client meeting with Microsoft Teams/Google Hangouts/WebEx/GotoMeeting because their company bans Zoom, it's a recipe for a fruitless meeting. Someone will fumble the sharing controls; screens will take forever to present; at least one person's microphone will become inaudible, st…

Tandem is still new and has bugs but it’s never been a meeting killer. It doesn’t really have a guest access feature yet, though (at least to my knowledge).

Re: Stop using Zoom, Hamburg’s data protection agency warns state government

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone how uses both Zoom and Google Hangouts, there is nothing Zoom offers that Google hangouts does not provide. The quality is the same for both, but at least Hangouts does not install a sketchy client on my machine that constantly runs in the background.

Hangouts has zoom-level annotation or 5k screen share where texts are crisp?

How often do you use those features, and how useful are they to all participants?

Re: Stop using Zoom, Hamburg’s data protection agency warns state government

#78
post #27

Offer a comparable alternative, then. I spend half my day on meetings either internally or with clients, and every time I have to jump on a client meeting with Microsoft Teams/Google Hangouts/WebEx/GotoMeeting because their company bans Zoom, it's a recipe for a fruitless meeting. Someone will fumble the sharing controls; screens will take forever to present; at least one person's microphone will become inaudible, st…

It's not their job to name alternatives, it's their job if a tool complies to the laws.

Technically yes, but practically, if someone can't get their job done without breaking rules, they're going to break the rules. If your goal is actual compliance with rules, giving people a way to comply is much more effective.

Re: Stop using Zoom, Hamburg’s data protection agency warns state government

#79

Offer a comparable alternative, then. I spend half my day on meetings either internally or with clients, and every time I have to jump on a client meeting with Microsoft Teams/Google Hangouts/WebEx/GotoMeeting because their company bans Zoom, it's a recipe for a fruitless meeting. Someone will fumble the sharing controls; screens will take forever to present; at least one person's microphone will become inaudible, st…

As someone how uses both Zoom and Google Hangouts, there is nothing Zoom offers that Google hangouts does not provide. The quality is the same for both, but at least Hangouts does not install a sketchy client on my machine that constantly runs in the background.

I'm sorry, but Hangouts is terrible. It sucks on every level. The UI is so bad it's hard to believe. I wish I could sit down with their product team to get an explanation for how badly Hangouts is designed. Takes about 10s to see all the problems with it compared to Zoom.

Re: Stop using Zoom, Hamburg’s data protection agency warns state government

#80
post #71

It would be nice if Teams weren't yet another Electron disaster.

And instead of improving their code so Teams is fast as VS Code, they delegated it to the Edge team to write a new version of Electron called WebView2. Teams' codebase is apparently so bad that it's not fixable and they need to rely on others to rewrite the runtime for them. For good measure it also subscribes to the media keys on the keyboard. To mute your microphone you might think, but no, to play the dial tone tw…

WebView2 is the MS Edge browser technology that can be instanced as a browser control in your application. [1]

It is not electron.

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/

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