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New Skype Update Is Horrible

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Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#111

Post by dasil003 »

gerardnll wrote: post #102
pveierland wrote: post #66

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…

It is nonsense. I don't think there's a reason to do that except to scam users. Any UX-UI Dev / Engineer / Person with common sense knows that users would not understand the process. 180 days and my credit is disabled but I can reactivate it again anytime? what the hell? What I'm not sure of is what happens if you buy credit without reactivating the inactive balance... Does it reactivate the inactive balance or not?…

My wild guess would be that their finance people do not like a monotonically increasing liability on the books. Since some users will never use their credits, this is their way of satisfying the bean counters.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#112

Post by itake »

richardknop wrote: post #99
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.

Slack has a good call quality from my experience.

I beg to differ. Really doesn't work well in low bandwidth networks.

Google hangouts does a pretty solid job reconnecting (even after switching off a VPN during a call).

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#113

Post by berdario »

fazilakhtar wrote: post #51
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.

Slack team chat

It fails to work with Firefox

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#114

Post by pveierland »

mw6621 wrote: post #106
pveierland wrote: post #66

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'm not sure if things have changed since your experience, but the last time I exceeded the 180 days of inactivity, my credits were removed from the Skype client and a link appeared in their place, telling me to "reactivate" my credits on the website. I went to the website and clicked a link and my credits showed in the Skype client again.

As stated in the link, they replaced their expiration policy with a reactivation policy as a result of the class action lawsuit. The last time this happened to my account I was sent a link which allowed me to reactivate the credits.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#115

Post by jeltz »

Jach wrote: post #67
jeltz wrote: post #27

So it is not just us Linux users which will be hit by a horrible Skype upgrade? I run the by now ancient 4.3.0.37 (they never bothered to port Skype 5.0 an later to Linux) which they will kill off by the end of the month in a favor for their half-assed beta client which is still missing many of the features which Skype 4.3 had.

I gave up with the native clients earlier this year when I could no longer get any to run and log me in. I now use https://github.com/stanfieldr/ghetto-skype Yeah it's Electron web-shit and it doesn't work with video calls (but there are enough low-friction alternatives now like Hangouts I can insist on should a skype friend really want to video chat) but at least it's no worse than their browser interface and won't…

There is a plugin which adds Skype support to Pidgin which I have yet to try. https://github.com/EionRobb/skype4pidgin/tree/master/skypewe...

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#116

Post by JoshMnem »

After Microsoft bought Skype, it went downhill. The Linux version became even more buggy. The Android version didn't work well.

So I started telling people that "I don't use Skype" and to call me on Google Hangouts or my cell phone instead. Slack's free plan also offers voice calls. If you need a phone number that forwards to you, Twilio offers that service at a much better price than Skype.

Abandoning Skype over the past few years hasn't been a problem at all.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#117

Post by alkonaut »

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)

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#118

Post by JoshMnem »

owaislone wrote: post #71
crb wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

Google Hangouts has serious UI problems. People can't find the chat even when it's pointed out to them. Chat should be more prominent.

At the moment, it's easier to send people to a Slack channel to chat during a Hangout than to use Hangout's chat.

Re: New Skype Update Is Horrible

#120

Post by richdougherty »

dasil003 wrote: post #111
gerardnll wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is nonsense. I don't think there's a reason to do that except to scam users. Any UX-UI Dev / Engineer / Person with common sense knows that users would not understand the process. 180 days and my credit is disabled but I can reactivate it again anytime? what the hell? What I'm not sure of is what happens if you buy credit without reactivating the inactive balance... Does it reactivate the inactive balance or not?…

My wild guess would be that their finance people do not like a monotonically increasing liability on the books. Since some users will never use their credits, this is their way of satisfying the bean counters.

You're absolutely right, of course.

It's still weird because it puts off customers buying Skype credits in the first place, and getting credit from your customers is pretty great.

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