Jamie's Random Musings
Various thoughts and adventures, including but not limited to Linux, Windows XP and Widows Vista, and assorted bits of hardware new and old.
Sunday 6 April 2008, 5:00 PM
Skype 3.8 Beta Release - Ho Hum, Same Old Bugs
According to the release propaganda, this version has "significantly better audio quality". Now, if you made a product which had literally thousands of complaints about video problems - freezing, missing, crashing, color bars, and on and on and on - would you put your development effort into improving the audio quality? Neither would I.
I downloaded it, installed it on my test system, and started it up long enough to verify that the "presence reporting" problem is still there. After that, combined with what I had seen (and not seen) in the User Forums, I just shut it back down and forgot about it.
PreviousComments on this post
Update:
It has now been a week since Skype released 3.8 beta. The "experts" in the Skype User Forum have been feverishly telling anyone and everyone to try the new beta release in hopes of solving the multitude of problems which get reported there every day (because they are being ignored by Skype so-called "support"). The way these things typically go, within the first couple of days you get happy campers posting things like "Hooray, it fixed the [video/audio/presence/crash/whatever] problem that I have been having!" What has happened on the Skype User Forums? Silence. Nothing. Not one post that I can find from anyone who says that they installed the 3.8 beta release and it fixed anything.
The same is true in the computer press and blogs as well. There has been one article from the Skype Cheerleaders over at the "Independent" Skype Journal, saying that it seems like the 3.8 beta release "might" be making HQ Video work a little better, and it "appears" that a problem with Skype arbitrarily disconnecting calls "has been addressed". (Odd that the Cheerleaders never mentioned this calling problem with Skype before.) Other than this "independent" article, I haven't been able to find any "success stories" on the web.
My verdict remains the same. Skype is banished to my test system, and those who are serious about Video IM, VoIP and IM chat would be well advised to look elsewhere than Skype.
I could not agree more. Looking at the forum nothing had been fixed since 3.6, in fact things seem to of got worse and as is the norm Skype CS and the so call experts are staying very silent.
Why did Skype go the HQ Video way when to the best of my knowledge the old non HQ worked for a very large amount of people like a dream, it was not until HQ came out that all hell broke loose.
As far as the audio goes I have not noticed any difference at all from way back when for me the 2.5 audio worked fine and to add confirmation to this comment I don't think I have seen a single post on the forum to say that my audio is now like listening to digital radio so crystal clear and noise free.
Like Jamie I would say if you want to use Skype great but don't even bother to use it for anything other that IM or PC to PC chat because even though you might not have any problems with the paid services as far as quality goes as soon as you purchase credit for Skypeout the immediately BLOCK your account shouting possible FRAUD.
With regards to video problems you spoke about in the initial post and then this quote:
"What has happened on the Skype User Forums? Silence. Nothing. Not one post that I can find from anyone who says that they installed the 3.8 beta release and it fixed anything."
Has anyone in the forums posted that they STILL experience these problems? Often silence can illustrate that their problems are addressed, as people can be thankless beasts and instead of coming back and indicating it did work and thanking people for the effort they put in to help them through their problem they just go about their day and never report back.
Thanks for the comment.
In the weeks since my initial post and update, there have in fact been two posts in the forums saying that the 3.8 beta release appears to have fixed a video problem. There have also been many more specifically saying that the beta release does not fix their problems.
While I agree that people often don't come back to announce success, my experience during the time when I was helping others on the Skype User Forums was that by the time users found their way there, they were often so desperate that if their problem did finally get solved, they very often came back to say thanks.
However, this might now be an unfair comparison, since Skype has changed the "User Forums" to their "Community", and in doing so has made the entire web site so confusing and difficult to use that the volume of posting has gone down to about 10% of what it was before this week. It would appear that their efforts to discourage pesky users having problems with Skype from seeking assistance there are generally successful.
