Occasional Observations

I think Skype's blown it with the new version, 4.0, which is currently in beta. I managed about a week with the beta version 4 before heading back to skype.com to download the old, familiar version, which is currently 3.8.

As I did so, up pops a questionnaire window asking why I was downgrading ... listing pretty much all my reasons ... which suggests that I'm not the only one who has been perplexed and irritated by the all-new "shiny" interface.

First of all, I have never wanted a full-screen Skype application. I use it more than anything else for IM - which doesn't need all my monitor's real estate. Even Skype isn't ready for full-screen: user images are tiny and pixelated. And moving between contacts in 4.0 was not intuitive.

Back to the drawing board, folks. The Skype Garage page for 4.0 says "it?s easier to start conversations and keep track of them" - which I dispute. And by the looks of it, 4.0 is not ready for prime time yet.

Labels: skype, tech, VoIP

John Lennon wrote about watching the wheels go round and round ... that's exactly what millions of Skype users have been doing for the last 24-plus hours.

When it starts, Skype warns: Take a deep breath. I've often wondered why. Now I know - because you need a massive amount of patience to keep on using a VoIP system that's been crippled by an outage for around 36 hours.

Maybe Google Talk has improved since I last tried it around 18 months ago. If it actually works, it'll be better than Skype. This probably isn't Skype's death knell but if the outage goes on much longer, it will be a reminder to millions of people to look elsewhere for their PC-based VoIP telephony. Remember Napster? Me too - it was the soaraway leader in its field once, but I haven't used it for years. In fact I saw the icon on the desktop of an HP machine the other day and this reminded me that Napster still existed.

It's tough at the top and the software industry is fickle.

Labels: rant, VoIP