What Skype Needs To Learn 2
I’ve been a Skype user for many years. I’ve even had the paid subscription for months at a time. Generally, it did what I needed better than other solutions, until I tried to make it my home phone too. That worked, but not as well (quality) as I’d like.
Anyway, I find myself trying to get the latest versions of Skype for my systems this morning and ran into a few issues.
Here are things that didn’t work for me – for a normal user, these would be show stoppers.
Login Required to download free Skype?
Why must someone login to download Skype? I’ve had multiple Skype accounts for years. Why do they need to track us, personally, while downloading a new version? They can easily track us by IP address or using 1st-party cookies, if they like. The current method is broken.
3rd Party Scripting is mandatory?
I dislike Javascript and other tracking methods, especially from untrusted 3rd parties. I’m not likely to ever enable 3rd party tracking for a free tool. Sorry. I already allowed skypeassets.com and skype.com, but I’ll be damned if I’ll allow 2o7.net (sounds like a hacker domain to me) or facebook-anything or twitter-anything. Those companies are definitely not interested in protecting my privacy. In fact, those last 2 domains are blocked by my router.
I can understand leveraging Facebook and Twitter by Skype. Leverage is different from mandate.
Logins Aren’t Remembered by Skype Download Pages
So after I allowed scripting for skype*.com, I figured the download would work. It didn’t. So, I logged in using my main skype account on the download page. That failed to get the download, so I went back to the beginning to start over. It didn’t remember that I’d logged in. This was less than 2 minutes later. Clearly, Skype’s web login technology is broken. This isn’t the first time I’ve had major issues logging into skype web pages the last 5 years. It isn’t getting any better, sadly. Skype corporate really needs to fix this. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re all forced to use MS-Passport soon. I’ve never had a passport account. NEVER!
Download a different version from the current browser?
I don’t let MS-Windows PCs connect to the internet except for extremely specific reasons. It isn’t safe. All general web browsing is performed using Linux, for safety. When a vendor decides to help me out and redirect the browser to the Linux download, I appreciate that, but they usually allow other platform downloads to be accessed too, not Skype. Once redirected to the Linux download page, any attempts to click on Download Latest Windows version redirects back to the Linux download. This is broken behavior, IMHO.
Overall Hassle Factor = High
Every time I need to do something with the Skype website, it is a hassle. Every time. Their web designers and programmers need to step back and stop trying to be different. They need to learn to be similar and platform independent.
A few months ago, I needed to cancel my skype subscription and the only way to do that is through their support website. It took me over 30 minutes to figure out how to cancel (you have to open a ticket) and get money refunded that Skype had already charged to my credit card. Their associates were professional, prompt and courteous, once I got to one of them. Like I said, hassle factor = high.
Microsoft – Same as the Old Boss
What does the ownership by Microsoft really mean to Skype? Probably just better funding for the first 1-2 years. Perhaps better integration with MS-Office and other Windows platform stuff, eventually. That will be nice, unless it become creepy, which could easily happen. Twitter feels creepy to me already. I pray that Microsoft didn’t simply purchase Skype for the client list and plans to migrate everyone over to MS-net. Yuck.
Workaround
You can skip all the Skype download road blocks by jumping directly to the post-download page At least for the Windows version. I’d already grabbed the latest Linux version, 2.2-beta, a few days ago – it had some major sound issues (constant static) that v2.0 and v2.1 didn’t show. I would provide feedback to Skype, but dealing with their support website is too much hassle. I guess that’s one way to never have negative feedback. Have a support website that sucks.
Notice – Really No Complaints About Voice Service Here
I’m not really complaining about their tool, just what everyone has to go through to get it. On the whole, those tools do an reasonable job, even cross platform, at least in my experience. Seriously, I’ve used Skype on desktops, laptops running Windows7, XP, Linux and on a Nokia portable. The sound quality is generally acceptable. It is only when you want to do something beyond 1-on-1 talking that issues seem to happen.
Perhaps If I Tweet Complaints to @skype?
Perhaps if I tweet that Skype website and support-site both suck to their corporate web page, they will see this and fix it? It is a major hassle to tweet for me. More road blocks. Why should I expect anything different. Perhaps a General feedback option in the Skype clients would be useful?
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Personally I dislike skype because of their use of supernodes (basically taking advantages of the poor saps with no firewalls for processing resources to run their service) That and the fact that it has been developing for years on linux and is still yet to interface with V4l directly (try using any webcam with a gspca driver (logitech) with it and you will see what I mean
Here’s a quote:
Maybe, just maybe, Microsoft and Skype are doing us all a favour here, cutting the lifeline so we are forced to evolve.
It seems that someone has told the Asterisk project that connecting to Skype and selling the product which does that won’t be allowed any longer after some point in July. Skype is closed source so the hundreds ANd probably thousands of businesses leveraging it are screwed.
Here’s the source article over at ComputerWorld.