Jamie's Random Musings on Video IM
Having spent a good part of the last year struggling with a variety of video chat and IM programs, I have decided to write a few things down and see what other people have to say about them.
Wednesday 30 April 2008, 2:12 PM
Skype 3.8 Release Available
Skype has released 3.8 "Gold" for Windows.
They made one change that is half-good. Incoming contact requests pop up without the picture. That's a start. But why don't they get it? A new contact request from SexySandra or whoever doesn't need to pop up automatically in the middle of your display! The names that the hordes of Skype Sex Spammers are using now are nearly as embarrassing as the pictures that come with them (which are still only one click away from your children). A contact request should be treated like any other event, it can be flagged the same as a missed call, to be dealt with at a later time. That's actually a good comparison - is a new contact request from someone, whether it is MostlyNakedMary or an old friend, really more important than a missed call from someone with whom you already communicate? The former pops up blaring in the middle of your screen, and the latter is indicated by a very discreet little flag overlaying the Skype icon in the Windows system tray which many, perhaps most, users either don't notice, don't recognize or don't understand what it means anyway?
Other than that, Skype makes the usual claims about improved audio, fixing video bugs, better handling of audio devices and such. If you then go to the Skype Community (the mutilated Skype User Forums), you find that people with 3.8 beta are still complaining about video freeze, audio dropout, and much more.
I have installed the new release on my test system, and the one thing I can personally report is that the Skype "presence reporting" is still broken. The one major contact I still have on Skype has been shown as offline most of the day, and I know he has been online because I've been chatting with him on ooVoo. The few other contacts that I still show on there have been bouncing online and offline all day, but are they really doing that, or is Skype "presence" just totally hosed? Beats me.
Do I need to say it again? If you are looking for a video/audio/text IM program, do yourself a favor and get one that works - ooVoo, SightSpeed and Gizmo5 are all vastly superior to Skype. I know it can be tough to get your contacts who may already by using Skype to convert, because I've been through that. But believe me, both you and your contacts will be happier if you change over.
jw 30/4/2008
Wednesday 30 April 2008, 8:53 AM
Windows XP SP3 Installed
I have downloaded and installed Service Pack 3 for Windows XP Professional on my Fujitsu Lifebook S6510. Everything went smoothly, and it seems to work just fine. I don't see anything particularly better after the installation, but more importantly I don't see anything worse either.
Overall I am very happy with the S6510 running XP since my latest retreat from Vista last week. As I have said so many times before, it works, it is stable, it is fast, and everything else that I own works with it.
What kind of strange world is this, when the company which controls the market can stop sales of an operating system that works, in order to force purchases of an operating system that has been proven, over and over again, to still have so many bugs and performance problems that it is clearly inferior to the one being withdrawn? I sincerely hope that OEMs such as Fujitsu, Dell, HP and the like, who will have to take the brunt of the customer support calls and dissatisfaction, continue to pressure Microsoft to allow them to continue selling XP. I mean, honestly, if Intel alone could pressure Microsoft into doing something that was clearly technically "wrong" (changing the minimum requirements for Visa), one would hope that a group of OEMs could convince them to do something that is obviously technically "right".
Of course, that's not the way this world, and this market, generally works. Unfortunately.
UPDATE:
According to an article by Mary Jo Foley on the ZDNet.com site, Microsoft has suddenly decided not to release XP SP3 to Windows Update and the Download Center. For those who still want to download it via the direct link to the executable, as I did, please read the excellent article by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes on the same site, explaining the considerations of such a direct download, and the link to the executable patch file.
The problem seems to be a compatibility issue with a rather obscure Microsoft Business product. Moreover, they have not only held back XP SP3, they have also stopped Vista SP1 from Automatic Download (again) for the same reason. This seems very mysterious to me - I am sure that Microsoft isn't doing this out of the goodness of its heart, nor out of concern for their general customers. There must be more to it than meets the eye - perhaps it is a security issue, or they are afraid that it could provide the basis for another huge lawsuit or some such. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Thursday 24 April 2008, 8:19 PM
Vista vs. XP: The Final Retreat
I suppose that most people are getting tired of reading about Vista vs. XP. I know that I am getting tired of writing about. I'm getting even more tired of fighting with it. So this will be the last time I do either of those, for the foreseeable future. I give up. I surrender. I retreat, for the final time. My Fujitsu Lifebook S6510 is running Windows XP Professional again, and I have no intention of spending any more time or effort on Vista until Vista SP2 comes out, at which point I might consider it again.
What precipitated the retreat, this time, was that I turned my laptop on this morning, after having done a normal "suspend" last night, and after several minutes of black screen and endless disk activity, Vista said "Improper shutdown detected, recovering...", and then proceeded to count from 1% to 100%, very slowly. Then it made a fresh boot, did a lot more thrashing around on the disk, asked me if I wanted to boot normal, safe mode or whatever, and then finally came up again. The whole process took a good 15 minutes.
That scares the daylights out of me - especially after having Vista give me the "unable to boot / unable to recover" business previously. Second, we are at a critical point in my work right now, and it is crucial that when I turn the laptop on, it is ready to use quickly - that is the reason I use suspend/resume in the first place. So I can't afford to have it unexpectedly take 15 minutes or more, or even worse have not start at all. So, I spent the morning putting back in the disk with XP Pro, which I had swapped out at the beginning of this month when I got Vista SP1 to install. Fortunately, that didn't take too long, almost everything I needed was already loaded, all I had to do was update the drivers, copy over mail and such. By early afternoon everything was running normally again.
In addition to this "major" problem which was the straw that broke the camel's back, there were a few other "minor" problems that had been getting more irritating as time went by. In order of severity and irritation, they were:
- Wireless-N connection to the Linksys WRT350N router. The problem I have written about previously, where Vista makes the Wireless-N connection the first time without trouble, but on some subsequent attempt it will no longer connect, was back with a vengeance. I did manage to figure out that if I reboot the router, it restarts the cycle - the laptop will connect again right away, and probably will connect the next two or three times, but it will always fail again. I had absolutely no luck getting this fixed, or even figuring out where the problem is. Linksys Customer Support said that it looks like it is probably a Vista problem, and neither Intel (the WiFi adapter) nor Microsoft have any reports of similar problems that I can find. Being able to use the laptop wireless anywhere in the house is important, so this was getting to be a major issue.
- Memory leak. I just wrote about this last week. When I boot Vista, the memory meter shows 38% memory in use (of a total of 3 GB). If I use the laptop without rebooting for a day or two, the memory use slowly creeps up to the 60-70% range. Then it starts to act strangely, and I have to reboot. I've tried shutting down all applications, even including the AVG Internet Security, and the memory use does not go below 60%, so I assume it is Vista itself, or a system program or utility that is leaking memory.
- Fingerprint reader. Sometimes when I suspend/resume, it doesn't seem to recognize the fingerprint reader. The OmniPass software comes up with a "master login" window, asking for name and password, rather than the fingerprint scan window. I suspect that this was performance related somehow, that Vista was waking up and looking around for devices, and didn't recognize and configure the fingerprint reader before the OmniPass software wanted it. It only happened about 20% of the time, but that was enough.
- Screen Saver: Some time ago, the screen saver stopped coming on. I checked the settings, they were all correct, but it just never kicked in, as if Vista thought something was active all the time.
It's too bad. I've said many times before, I like using Vista, and I really want it to be as good as, or better than, XP. But this laptop is a tool for me, and the first priority is for it to work. So no more Vista for quite a while The good news is, that also means no more writing about Vista for quite a while.
jw 24/4/2008
Wednesday 23 April 2008, 9:48 AM
New Skype CEO "Interview" - He Still Doesn't Get It!
Skype has just published a so-called "interview" with their new CEO. First, rather than face the press and public, and possibly have to answer some hard questions from people who have (miserable) experience with Skype, he chose to hide behind a pseudo-interview with his own publicity manager. Second, even with every softball question possible being served up to him, it is obvious that he still doesn't get it.
The biggest problem with Skype today is their disgraceful "Customer Support". It is not simply lacking, it's worse than that, it's counter-productive. When someone is trying to set up or use Skype to talk to loved ones who are far away, to show Grandma the new baby, or to conduct important business, and it doesn't work (which happens all too often), first, they want to be able to contact Customer Support quickly and easily. Not through some obscure web page, which even makes it difficult to submit a help request, but by telephone, or at the very least by email. They want a response in a reasonable amount of time - and that is measured in hours, not days or weeks - and they want a response that is intelligent and has the potential to solve their problem, not something that is so patently ridiculous that they either laugh or cry over it.
The second problem that absolutely must be solved at Skype is their habit of blocking users' accounts for no apparent reason (supposedly for the users own protection), and then taking days, weeks or even months to answer pleas for help and explanation.
Instead of talking about working on these problems, the CEO spends his time repeating the same empty promises of "ease of use" (he should take a look at the redesigned Skype User Forum for an excellent example of the opposite of "ease of use"), "world class video" (well, maybe, if you are willing to let Skype dictate the specific webcams you can use, rather than just the specifications), and once again hyping the vaporware "multi-party video" from Skype (SightSpeed has had this for quite some time, ooVoo has it now... Skype is still saying "real soon now").
Oh, and he parrots the totally bogus "300 million Skype users" claim. Of course, when you are talking to your own publicity manager, whose salary you pay and whose fate you can decide, it's not likely that you're going to get any hard questions, or get challenged on any of your claims or statements. Come out and talk to the real world, the real press, and some real frustrated Skype users, and things look substantially different.
jw 23/4/2008
Saturday 19 April 2008, 7:29 AM
SightSpeed Light on MySpace
The people at SightSpeed continue to impress me with their originality and creativity. I received an announcement this morning in my email of a new (beta) version of SightSpeed Light for MySpace. In the current version, it includes one-to-one video chat and video messaging between MySpace users.
It is implemented as a free widget for MySpace. It looks to me as if it is a variation, or further development, of the MySightSpeed flash-based feature that I wrote about in January - and which I liked very much. The announcement says that it currently works between MySpace users, but that a version which interoperates with other versions of SightSpeed will be coming soon.
I think this will be a really good addition for a lot of MySpace users.
jw 19/4/2008
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