Consumers Turn Against Skype Since Microsoft Acquisition

I kinda like skype. I even like the fact i can have skype for business for work and regular skype for personal use running at the same time. At least it's better than face time which is apple only i think.
 
havent used it since they sold, now with discord and oovoo and all the alternatives why would I? Microsoft ran it into the ground. I think my account may have some change on it still but call quality sucked and video calls never worked any device any isp. The myspace analogy fits like a glove.
 
Wild1 said:
havent used it since they sold, now with discord and oovoo and all the alternatives why would I? Microsoft ran it into the ground. I think my account may have some change on it still but call quality sucked and video calls never worked any device any isp. The myspace analogy fits like a glove.
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If the video calls did not work, it was a problem on your end, not theirs. Strange, I have used the video call function numerous times without issue. Yes, the interface appears to be function over form which means the function is there but it is not intuitive anymore. The service itself works just as it always has, though.
 
Skype was getting pretty bad before MS picked them up, since then it has only been a very quick dive downhill. I don't even have Skype installed on any of my computers anymore. I'd rather use Discord for audio and video chat, it is a vastly superior experience.
 
kring said:
We transitioned last year to skype being our sole communication for work - it's a bit of a mess. while calls are fine, all the other features that came from Lync never cleanly integrated. Each version of Skype wastes more and more screen space which is the complete opposite of what a business app should do. Skype now dominates you monitor real estate rather then cleanly sits off to the side, tons of wasted white space you can't control. users of consumer skype can't video call with Skype for business people... two different platforms.
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This all started with office 2013 in general, so much wasted white space everywhere!
 
MS does some really stupid things.
I used to use MSN and Skype. When they were intergrated I seem to have lost most of my msn contacts. No i can sign in with a facebook, msn or skype ID.
I remember to major updates to skype that made it significantly worse and more difficult to navigagte. On top of being a steaming pile of crap, they haven't even nailed VOIP.
In the UK international calling is so cheap that I call China and Canada with my phone. I use skype or facebook to video chat with friends. In China I get family to use WeChat.
 
Rob94hawk said:
People still use Skype? LOL
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Many fellow business people use it. In fact the majority of people I know that use it, use it for biz.

ManofGod said:
It's function works just as well as it always did. However, it's form now leaves a lot to be desired. :(
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Yeah in general the function is the same. It's just harder to do some things with new UI.
Best advice run the older versions, oldest I can get working is 7.40.0.104.

To get the 'original' UI or close;

>View
>Enable compact side bar view
>Split window view

Now you have individual windows for each contact etc.
 
Skype is an anti-productivity tool.

Host the meeting of 10+ at least one or two will not be able to join, have issues joining or dropping out.

In about 1 in 10 meetings the host will drop out, so if you do not have two hosts (which has become the norm for larger meetings), everyone else waits for few min until server issues are resolved and host reconnects.

Random users cannot utilize full functionality, as in screen sharing works, but utilizing file upload/sharing from Skype does not, no way to fix/address it in a reasonable amount of time (weeks) and so on... I am unfortunate to have had to use it for years already and the tool regresses, it was better 2 years ago than it is today, features and reliability wise.

Bean counters do not have a good methodology to count millions in lost productivity from using it, so the platform is undoubtedly underpowered on top to save a little more on electricity bills, all in all, if any large organization has sense, they will steer clear of deploying this particular POS.
 
DPI said:
Had to doublecheck that this wasn't a necro thread. This was news in like 2012.

If you want to laugh yourself batty check out the UWP version in the windows 10 store. It's sarcastically devoid of functionality compared to the desktop version.
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And they keep nagging you if you run the desktop version on 10 to "upgrade" to the uwp version. It's only a question of time when they'll decide to force that, and then that'll be the EOL for skype.
 
Never used skype but silly question, if MS bought them why is it not included into W10?
 
Ur_Mom said:
If Microsoft decides to lose focus on a product, it can go downhill real fast. They need to keep a strong focus on something, otherwise it just goes to shit. They may still support it and make new features, but they just don't have the backing they used to have with it.
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I feel like the XBOX platform is a mess and it has plenty of focus. Not sure what's going on at MS, but they can't seem to get anything right anymore. Their ineptitude provides me with job security but is also infuriating (see Windows Updates).
 
The Windows app sucks badly now. What is worse is that my Linux client on an older kernel stopped working and stopped being updated.

Microsoft are such idiots and we all know that but I don't grasp the need for them to prove that each and every time.

It is not hard to screw up things but Microsoft are just to gifted.
 
They cant even do a simple layup task like make the presentation effectively take up the whole UI or not overlay a user icon onto the presentation screen when there is like a cubic foot of black border around the screen share... It's like they have no one using the product. Oh wait everyone at Microsoft has an iPhone now so they probably dont... (Skype 4 Biz)
 
Skype for Business is not Skype ... it is Lync rebranded. Lync has always been a pile of turd. Microsoft needed to do something to refresh its reputation by rebranding it with a name that has very good reputation to delay the inevitable.
 
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Isn't Skype for Business completely different from consumer skype?, and honestly Skype for business is working for us in the office. Not sure but I think the not much has changed in the backend infrastructure of the consumer skype. We are still using it at home. What really bites is the way Skype is now being licensed across platforms (same reason why the skype app was removed on my sony smart tv, not that I am missing it though)
 
I hate most of what Microsoft has done lately, but I honestly cannot gripe about Skype. I do wish the GUI had a font size control. But after I changed the default contact list to 'name only' it really helped clean it up. But the amount of space between lines/contacts is a waste of real estate in the GUI.

I'm surprised so many are saying "its bad" the call quality is decent, and even the video is good. We have conference calls (some with 200 people), share screens, documents, etc. Am I easily satisfied or are you guys just full of hate?
 
So, what are people using instead of Skype? I know Discord is favored heavily in the gaming community.
 
keshley said:
So, what are people using instead of Skype? I know Discord is favored heavily in the gaming community.
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Discord with be completely useless to me, at least for what I use Skype for and the fact that I use it on my Xbox One X with Kinect 2. I do not do Skype on my computer, although I could, because I want to sit in my easy chair and Skype there.
 
RussianJ said:
Haven't used it in ages. Just so many other options
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Such as? So many other options that I can use on whatever on want like? I do Skype on Xbox to other computers with ease, what are these other options you speak of?
 
kring said:
We transitioned last year to skype being our sole communication for work - it's a bit of a mess. while calls are fine, all the other features that came from Lync never cleanly integrated. Each version of Skype wastes more and more screen space which is the complete opposite of what a business app should do. Skype now dominates you monitor real estate rather then cleanly sits off to the side, tons of wasted white space you can't control. users of consumer skype can't video call with Skype for business people... two different platforms.
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I'm curious what you are seeing. I find Skype for Business 2016 to be cleaner, smoother and just as small as Lync is. I still have to use Lync 2010 on a contract system and I think 2016 blows it away. Or is this just purely the consumer version of skype we're talking about? I've never used that, so I can't compare
 
Never used anything like it for business, but have been using online chat programs since before 2000 beginning with AOL, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, MS Messenger and finally Skype. Back in the day even Yahoo Messenger had decent video chat ability for home use. Went to Skype because a friend in Russia was using it. I liked it back then, and even after MS bought it I kept blocking the updates from version 5 as long as I could and it kept working great. Once MS made it a "cloud" based program and I had to upgrade it has been horrible. The old simple no frills text chat interface was awesome, but this new thing that looks like the stupid cartoonish stuff on most smart phones that uses up twice the screen space that is necessary I can't stand. Video chat is also much slower for me on a slow connection, even with 1.5MB DSL it drags, where the old version had usable video even on a dial up connection. Most people I chat with actually moved back to ICQ for text only chat, at least with that I can talk to anyone whether they are on MS or Linux or anything else.
 
Skype really has only gone downhill since Microsoft took over. The only reason anyone uses it outside of business, is because the video chat interface is easy as hell to use compared to virtually anyone else, and isn't really proprietary to any particular platform/OS.

My personal gripe is that the chat history log is inaccessible now without a specialized viewer. Don't know if it was always that way, but I do remember in times past, accessing my logs was nowhere near this difficult. It was also local, so I didn't have to try and pull it from some stupid fucking cloud like I do now by going back up in the history.

Also, the Android app is fucking garbage. The notification bug was finally fixed, but now it's been replaced with the app not being able to remain running in the background at ALL. It's been like this on two different phones.

Add to it that the UI is still the blinding bright fucking white on the desktop and yeah, I am not pleased with it.
 
use Viber here myself it just works and does not require linking to MS account to get it to work right
 
I fired Skype up a few days ago after not using it for years. Amazed how crappy it looks.

Unfinished?
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
use Viber here myself it just works and does not require linking to MS account to get it to work right
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Nope, it requires linking to your Viber account and having another account to manage instead. Also, is Viber on the Xbox?
 
Never liked Skype, I use google hangouts when I need to video chat since it's built into lots of phones now a days, Facebook messenger video chat works ok as well. For group chatting discord And teamspeak are my two favourites.

Zarathustra[H] said:
I'm going to go even further and ask, who the hell needs video calling at all? It really is just a gimmick that doesn't add any value over an audio only phone call to me.
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For me it's so I can see my kids/wife when I'm gone for work. I can spend up to a week away from them when I'm in the field so being able to see them is a nice moral booster
 
ManofGod said:
Nope, it requires linking to your Viber account and having another account to manage instead. Also, is Viber on the Xbox?
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viber does not require you to sign into anything... it just uses your phone contacts and the ones with the purple are peeps who have viber
 
Poore said:
Skype is being replaced with Teams. At least for business. We are using it and so far it's not bad. Imagine Skype + Slack. Calls seem to be hit and miss still. You can have both installed and running at the same time currently.
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I hate Teams. Work is starting to lean that direction... the o365 sharepoint switch was bad enough, now another layer on top of it to do ... what exactly? Add to-do check lists for projects?

I'm sorry, I didn't realize email was so fucking horrible that we had to switch to another system just to get someone to perform a task.

Not THAT long ago, my (previous) employer used Microsoft Communicator (MOC), which then became Lync, which was replace by Skype for Business.... except now file transfers almost never work. Voice chat and video chat will just lock up at random... full screen sharing works but sharing just one window causes freezes and drops. I mean, yeah... how did MS take perfectly function apps and turn them into... oh wait never mind.... "progress".
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I'm going to go even further and ask, who the hell needs video calling at all? It really is just a gimmick that doesn't add any value over an audio only phone call to me.
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My manager is in London.
My colleagues are in Erie, Aberdeen, Houston, Erie, Norway, Russia, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Paris, Sens, Angola, Dunfermline, Arnhem,rio,macau and it just keeps on going.

It is hugely beneficial and screen sharing is also a big requirement.
the latter being a shit show, sometimes I use teamviewer in conjuction to share my screen to south america cause Microsoft still haven't been able to do remote control (SCCM) or screen sharing capable of huge latencies (Norway-> Rio).
 
I actually have a problem, for once, with Microsoft being blamed for Skype's general shitiness. It was MASSIVELY shitty when they acquired it. It was unusable outside of Windows itself, and even there it was a buggy, inefficient mess. I can't say whether or not it improved in MS's hands, but it seems to have on the business side. But now it's just going to be renamed "Teams" and be part of Office 365, with more features and a more "Office-like" matching GUI. In fact, I think the only think Skype ever had going for it was broken promises (it was great in theory, it just wasn't reliable enough to use or usable at all on some devices/OS's), and a pretty splash screen (for the time)!
 
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