Skype for business is the biggest dumpster fire of software that I've had to use for work in the last few years. Truly awful- resource hog, screen sharing rarely works, and frequently crashes.
Skype for business is shit.
It filters content. I cannot paste an error to a colleague, because it's "too large". If I first write a meaningless "Hi" instead, I can paste the text just fine.
Settings revert a lot.
It's damn slow for remote sessions. Barely usable, really. File transfers don't work most of the time (and are slow).
Phone service? Call quality is really really bad.
The mobile app (Android at least) eats battery like candy, fails to send messages and is crashing a lot.
Lync/Skype for Business is a daily pain to suffer here.
Skype became really really terrible, it looks like it's been unmaintained during the past 10 years, I'd rate its usability worse than most open-source software. The sound quality is also awful, it feels like I'm calling a landline.
We're using Skype for Business and it's a daily source of issues. Call quality is often terrible and - unrelated to the audio/video aubject - screen sharing is so laggy that it is literally unusable most of the time ("Please click over there. wait for visual update "Now do..").
Another fun issue is that you cannot directly paste stuff without starting a conversation. It will block your message as "too long" most if the time, unless you write something meaningless and short first. "Hey. Skype sucks. Incoming error I need your help with:".
Skype is bad though? Like, I want a near-real time asynchronous messaging system that has all the features a messaging system should have... and you can't get that with Skype/Outlook. The two alone are a pain to use.
Personal Skype is annoying because it expires credits, so every couple months I have to log in and send a single text to spend some money.
All my other Skyping is just messaging and calls for free so it’s lame that they keep trying to expire the money I spent.
Skype for business is a giant ball of shit and perhaps the worse messenger product I’ve ever used, and I’ve used them all since IRC and text in 1993. Here’s how it sucks:
-Calls and video consume large bandwidth
-Client will peg cpu at 100% for unknown reasons while idling
-Sometimes client will freeze in the background and not take calls or IMs
-can’t drag and drop images into chat. Sends them as attachments
-not reliable. Calls will drop. Individuals on calls will drop. Screen share works or doesn’t work unpredictably. Video works or doesn’t work unpredictably.
-Messages aren’t delivered, sometimes with an error that says “prepend couldn’t be reached so message wasn’t delivered” even though the user shows as online and green
-Sometimes that message actually was delivered
-Mobile does not sync chats with desktop
Instant messaging is so simple and using Skype is worse than nothing. I’d rather email than have a tool that works 90% of the time. Imagine is SMS sometimes didn’t deliver messages. Who would use that.
Coupled with Skype being the reason why all other instant messenger apps were banned from orgs. In 2001, my company was using yahoo messenger, for free, without any of the problems above with 200 people IMing hundreds of times a day (although we never video or voice called). In 2021, my org pays for Teams and Skype and we use a mix of SMS/iMessage and a million other things because no one IMs any more.
There are many drawbacks of Skype for business use.
Just to name a few:
Outgoing Caller ID issues;
SkypeIn number does not offer many options on how to handle incoming calls;
SuperNode mode;
Share Desktop is peer 2 peer only, thus it does not work in a conference call;
Very limited call handling options;
etc
skype for business is by far the worst piece of software I've used in the past 5 years
things randomly don't work (e.g. video in groups, picture whiteboards in groups), there's an inability to turn off highlights in group messages, and my machine locks up when a voice call comes in (because the skype client is using 4gb of RAM and windows has swapped it out)
only the MS group chat software comes close to being that awful, that feels like an intern's first C# app
The problem with Skype is the software is terrible. Connection issues, even strange things like working audio and video but only some attendees being able to see screen sharing. Somehow it still has devotees even though far superior products like Zoom, Slack, and even Hangouts exist.
reply