6 ms·

As a remote worker who is on video conferencing calls most of the day, I have a lot of experience (aka strong feelings) with the tools mentioned in the article;

by wardb 7y ago

As a remote worker who is on video conferencing calls most of the day, I have a lot of experience (aka strong feelings) with the tools mentioned in the article; - Zoom is indeed great. Reliable and clean UI. Local recording to MP4 makes for easy sharing. - Webex is a bit less intuitive, but still reliable. Proprietary video recording protocol makes it video's hard to share. - Skype Business should die in a fire. Unreliable and terrible UI. The Mac version of it is pretty much broken. A lot of folks can't find out how to screen share. - BlueJean. Trying too hard to be fancy with their UI. They are also very proud with their Dolby Voice, but I find it harder to properly understand people (My hearing is not that great). - Google Hangouts / Meet doesn't work in Safari for no good reason IMHO. High CPU usage and could use some more features, like a personal room and default meetings settings (no vid/mute by default on join, default audio devices etc)

benjaminwootton 7y ago
Google could clean up in this market. Hangouts is an abomination though, very unintuitive to use.
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
  Google has lost all goodwill in this space in my opinion. They’ve built, sunsetted, and rebuilt multiple solutions for video conferencing and at this point who can trust them with putting out a long-term product?
  - ariwilson 7y ago
    What solutions are you referring to?
  - izacus 7y ago
    Can you explain which ones? The only product I know of is Hangouts and Google is right now rolling out updated Hangouts which is a compatible upgrade? (Having said that, Hangouts is far from perfect.)
    - realusername 7y ago
      Hangout, Allo, Duo, Google Voice, Gtalk, Meet, Wave... (list to be completed, there's probably a dozen more which died I don't remember).
      - govg 7y ago
        Of this list, only Hangouts is a video conferencing application, is it not? Allo's primary goal was chat, Duo's is 1-1 interaction, GTalk is simply the older version of hangouts, and so on.
        ulfw 7y ago
        What do you think Meets is for?
        izacus 7y ago
        Hangouts Meet, as it's full name suggests, is a compatible upgrade. And it's a bit of a wierd criticism since Hangouts actually predates Zoom and most of solutions suggested in this thread.
        sumedh 7y ago
        Or they could have built a single application which does both chat/audio/video.
        Spivak 7y ago
        Which was/is Hangouts?
        sumedh 7y ago
        I dont know, its so confusing with so many options from Google.
        mbesto 7y ago
        The fact that this is so confusing is part of the problem - consistency of product vision is not their forte and there are market economic consequences as a result.
- keerthiko 7y ago
  As with every other business market, google has the design, technical and market reach resources to clean up. However, as with every other business market, they never will due to their mysterious aversion to providing a) actual support b) product lifespans that businesses can rely on Their penchant for "surprise! sunset"ing major products that users rely on, and showing no reluctance to do this for business customers as well means only scrappy small players who feel like the cost differential or some specific feature is worth the threat of having to migrate one fine weekend. Specifically in the chat/videochat domain, Google has released and sunsetted gchat (to...) google talk (to hangouts) duo allo voice
  - beager 7y ago
    Their sales and support approach to Meet hardware is also abysmal. If they sold hardware direct, supported it through an official channel, and had reasonable documentation around it, they would slay, especially for customers who already have G Suite. Instead, it’s a confusing web of resellers bundling off-the-shelf hardware.
    - samstave 7y ago
      I say fuck google meet. The mic doesnt work on mobile, their ability to get people to join easily sucks. But i do like HighFive I have a slack integration to create a highfive video conf i just /highfive (name of meeting) and then share that link.
- distant_hat 7y ago
  Within our company we use Google for one person meetings, and BlueJeans for team meetings. Hangouts doesn't work well on anything other than Chrome. In Firefox it doesn't work with video on. It doesn't work well when other party is in China. We tend to use Skype for China calls.
  - tasuki 7y ago
    > we use Google for one person meetings Ah, Hangouts works splendid for one person meetings! Anything with two or more people I'd rather use something else ;)
    - distant_hat 7y ago
      Inadvertent mistake from my side but I upvoted you :)
lz400 7y ago
Amen about Skype business. Worst torture I've ever been submitted to.
pbowyer 7y ago
> - Zoom is indeed great. Reliable and clean UI. Local recording to MP4 makes for easy sharing. I disagree on the "clean UI". The actual "call in progress" window, yes - easy to find screen sharing, chat etc. The Zoom application on Windows, the scheduling 'feature' (did I get the right meeting room ID? Have I joined my personal one or the call's one?) and the website, both are among the most confusing UIs I've used. Beaten only by some enterprise Java-GUI'd software.
- telesilla 7y ago
  I completely agree. How many times I've been invited and didn't press the right buttons in the right order, there is always that dance "oh I didn't enable the camera, oh i didn't see my mic was disabled, can you hear me". It's not quite right. I always wondered why they couldn't really streamline that. And there is a serious flaw in their chat mechanism: it doesn't offer to email you or say "do you want to save your chat" before you log off, and I've lost more times than I remember some important notes.
ubermonkey 7y ago
Zoom is interesting to me, because we've been using GoToMeeting pretty exclusively for 8-10 years, and in that time the stability & software quality has kind of cratered.
mroche 7y ago
Having used Zoom for several remote projects, I really do love it. It’s reliable, great image quality for sharing screens (which was necessary for us), and had crystal clear audio. Zoom is great, giving customers access to an enterprise grade software solution for video conferencing at a low price. There’s several of what appear to be anti-WebEx posts around here, and it makes me question who have actually used it in its intended setup. The university I’m at recently redid a lot of the rooms, and created several so-called presentation zones that are outfitted with WebEx equipment. Multi-monitor presentation (for the speaker and audience), multi-view camera’s that track and focus on the current speaker/audience member, and an audio system who’s microphone can pick up sound from pretty much anywhere in the room and doesn’t feedback loop on itself. To me that’s the difference when you go with a Cisco solution. Other vendors you get a utility or software, Cisco gets you into an ecosystem of well integrated tools, both software and hardware. Whether or not you actually need them is up to you.
- jeena 7y ago
  This doesn't help when people mostly just want to join the standup from the tram or their desk at home.
  - mroche 7y ago
    I’ve joined across several devices (desktop, laptop, iPhone) with little to no issues. Maybe I’m just lucky and getting best case scenario?
    - jeena 7y ago
      I'd almost guess so, I tried to install broken deb packages on Linux and I think I tried some app for android (it's long ago, don't remember), in both cases I wasn't able to connect.
- danieldisu 7y ago
  Until you have to connect to one of these so called solutions from your laptop. Using Webex puts my cpu at 100% with a mediocre quality, while I can use hangouts or Slack to call without these problems.
vthallam 7y ago
We use HighFive at work and it works great. Never had issues on web or on mobile.
mdorazio 7y ago
Agree on Skype Business. Even the audio call quality is terrible. Based on the nag messages I get every day, though, it appears they’re migrating it Teams, which I still haven’t used. Does anyone know if it’s better?
- massivecali 7y ago
  No. My company just migrated from Skype to Teams and it's worse. Half the time, scheduled meetings don't connect. Mute button will randomly not work. Entire UI/UX is poorly thought out. Beyond that, I think Teams is trying to do everything at once, chat, fileshare, boards, etc. Without doing one thing well and expanding from there.
- pwarner 7y ago
  Teams video and audio is the best part of Teams. Teams was launched as a Slack killer, but in reality I think it's closer as a replacement to Zoom than Slack.
outside1234 7y ago
Skype for Business has essentially been depreciated at Microsoft. The modern conference call app is Teams.
- Spivak 7y ago
  How deprecated? Because $giant_university I used to work for is currently rolling it out for everyone.
localhostdotdev 7y ago
really liked appear.in until they added "sign up to create room" basically
ylem 7y ago
I agree with most of this, except I've had good luck with BlueJeans (relatively few people) and had some audio quality issues with Zoom. To be fair, it could be the wireless connectivity of the people I was connecting to...Screen sharing seemed to work fine for both...
mandeepj 7y ago
> Skype Business should die in a fire It has some great hidden features - seamless network switch (my wifi was giving problem. I switched to LAN. Skype displayed a message something like - 'detecting and switching network'. Call quality improved without disconnecting), make\promote an attendee a presenter. Their core tech is strong.

by wardb 7y ago

benjaminwootton 7y ago

Google could clean up in this market. Hangouts is an abomination though, very unintuitive to use.

ilikehurdles 7y ago
Google has lost all goodwill in this space in my opinion. They’ve built, sunsetted, and rebuilt multiple solutions for video conferencing and at this point who can trust them with putting out a long-term product?
- ariwilson 7y ago
  What solutions are you referring to?
- izacus 7y ago
  Can you explain which ones? The only product I know of is Hangouts and Google is right now rolling out updated Hangouts which is a compatible upgrade? (Having said that, Hangouts is far from perfect.)
  - realusername 7y ago
    Hangout, Allo, Duo, Google Voice, Gtalk, Meet, Wave... (list to be completed, there's probably a dozen more which died I don't remember).
    - govg 7y ago
      Of this list, only Hangouts is a video conferencing application, is it not? Allo's primary goal was chat, Duo's is 1-1 interaction, GTalk is simply the older version of hangouts, and so on.
      - ulfw 7y ago
        What do you think Meets is for?
        izacus 7y ago
        Hangouts Meet, as it's full name suggests, is a compatible upgrade. And it's a bit of a wierd criticism since Hangouts actually predates Zoom and most of solutions suggested in this thread.
      - sumedh 7y ago
        Or they could have built a single application which does both chat/audio/video.
        Spivak 7y ago
        Which was/is Hangouts?
        sumedh 7y ago
        I dont know, its so confusing with so many options from Google.
      - mbesto 7y ago
        The fact that this is so confusing is part of the problem - consistency of product vision is not their forte and there are market economic consequences as a result.
keerthiko 7y ago
As with every other business market, google has the design, technical and market reach resources to clean up. However, as with every other business market, they never will due to their mysterious aversion to providing a) actual support b) product lifespans that businesses can rely on Their penchant for "surprise! sunset"ing major products that users rely on, and showing no reluctance to do this for business customers as well means only scrappy small players who feel like the cost differential or some specific feature is worth the threat of having to migrate one fine weekend. Specifically in the chat/videochat domain, Google has released and sunsetted gchat (to...) google talk (to hangouts) duo allo voice
- beager 7y ago
  Their sales and support approach to Meet hardware is also abysmal. If they sold hardware direct, supported it through an official channel, and had reasonable documentation around it, they would slay, especially for customers who already have G Suite. Instead, it’s a confusing web of resellers bundling off-the-shelf hardware.
  - samstave 7y ago
    I say fuck google meet. The mic doesnt work on mobile, their ability to get people to join easily sucks. But i do like HighFive I have a slack integration to create a highfive video conf i just /highfive (name of meeting) and then share that link.
distant_hat 7y ago
Within our company we use Google for one person meetings, and BlueJeans for team meetings. Hangouts doesn't work well on anything other than Chrome. In Firefox it doesn't work with video on. It doesn't work well when other party is in China. We tend to use Skype for China calls.
- tasuki 7y ago
  > we use Google for one person meetings Ah, Hangouts works splendid for one person meetings! Anything with two or more people I'd rather use something else ;)
  - distant_hat 7y ago
    Inadvertent mistake from my side but I upvoted you :)

lz400 7y ago

Amen about Skype business. Worst torture I've ever been submitted to.

pbowyer 7y ago

> - Zoom is indeed great. Reliable and clean UI. Local recording to MP4 makes for easy sharing. I disagree on the "clean UI". The actual "call in progress" window, yes - easy to find screen sharing, chat etc. The Zoom application on Windows, the scheduling 'feature' (did I get the right meeting room ID? Have I joined my personal one or the call's one?) and the website, both are among the most confusing UIs I've used. Beaten only by some enterprise Java-GUI'd software.

telesilla 7y ago
I completely agree. How many times I've been invited and didn't press the right buttons in the right order, there is always that dance "oh I didn't enable the camera, oh i didn't see my mic was disabled, can you hear me". It's not quite right. I always wondered why they couldn't really streamline that. And there is a serious flaw in their chat mechanism: it doesn't offer to email you or say "do you want to save your chat" before you log off, and I've lost more times than I remember some important notes.

ubermonkey 7y ago

Zoom is interesting to me, because we've been using GoToMeeting pretty exclusively for 8-10 years, and in that time the stability & software quality has kind of cratered.

mroche 7y ago

Having used Zoom for several remote projects, I really do love it. It’s reliable, great image quality for sharing screens (which was necessary for us), and had crystal clear audio. Zoom is great, giving customers access to an enterprise grade software solution for video conferencing at a low price. There’s several of what appear to be anti-WebEx posts around here, and it makes me question who have actually used it in its intended setup. The university I’m at recently redid a lot of the rooms, and created several so-called presentation zones that are outfitted with WebEx equipment. Multi-monitor presentation (for the speaker and audience), multi-view camera’s that track and focus on the current speaker/audience member, and an audio system who’s microphone can pick up sound from pretty much anywhere in the room and doesn’t feedback loop on itself. To me that’s the difference when you go with a Cisco solution. Other vendors you get a utility or software, Cisco gets you into an ecosystem of well integrated tools, both software and hardware. Whether or not you actually need them is up to you.

jeena 7y ago
This doesn't help when people mostly just want to join the standup from the tram or their desk at home.
- mroche 7y ago
  I’ve joined across several devices (desktop, laptop, iPhone) with little to no issues. Maybe I’m just lucky and getting best case scenario?
  - jeena 7y ago
    I'd almost guess so, I tried to install broken deb packages on Linux and I think I tried some app for android (it's long ago, don't remember), in both cases I wasn't able to connect.
danieldisu 7y ago
Until you have to connect to one of these so called solutions from your laptop. Using Webex puts my cpu at 100% with a mediocre quality, while I can use hangouts or Slack to call without these problems.

vthallam 7y ago

We use HighFive at work and it works great. Never had issues on web or on mobile.

mdorazio 7y ago

Agree on Skype Business. Even the audio call quality is terrible. Based on the nag messages I get every day, though, it appears they’re migrating it Teams, which I still haven’t used. Does anyone know if it’s better?

massivecali 7y ago
No. My company just migrated from Skype to Teams and it's worse. Half the time, scheduled meetings don't connect. Mute button will randomly not work. Entire UI/UX is poorly thought out. Beyond that, I think Teams is trying to do everything at once, chat, fileshare, boards, etc. Without doing one thing well and expanding from there.
pwarner 7y ago
Teams video and audio is the best part of Teams. Teams was launched as a Slack killer, but in reality I think it's closer as a replacement to Zoom than Slack.

outside1234 7y ago

Skype for Business has essentially been depreciated at Microsoft. The modern conference call app is Teams.

Spivak 7y ago
How deprecated? Because $giant_university I used to work for is currently rolling it out for everyone.

localhostdotdev 7y ago

really liked appear.in until they added "sign up to create room" basically

ylem 7y ago

I agree with most of this, except I've had good luck with BlueJeans (relatively few people) and had some audio quality issues with Zoom. To be fair, it could be the wireless connectivity of the people I was connecting to...Screen sharing seemed to work fine for both...

mandeepj 7y ago

> Skype Business should die in a fire It has some great hidden features - seamless network switch (my wifi was giving problem. I switched to LAN. Skype displayed a message something like - 'detecting and switching network'. Call quality improved without disconnecting), make\promote an attendee a presenter. Their core tech is strong.