June 13, 2005
Why Skype is beating the crap out of MSN
Me and my brother give MSN a go. You might think we’re unreasonably Skype-mad here, but it’s not like we don’t try the alternatives…
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Illustrated MSN Messenger vs Skype..:-) from Segmentation Fault: Core dumped..;-)
[via Why Skype is beating the crap out of MSN] Click on the image above to read the conversation For what it's worth, I too have had similar results while using Windows Messenger. Bottomline, I've never been able to make audio work with me behind a Lin...
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We couldn't even make this up. Outside of basic IM, MSN is miserable. I guess we'll try again after the next patchset is out ...
R.
I think this is little bit unfair for MSN and others.
I am using on a regular basis MSN with my family and for a few years now.
In the past, we used to use MSN both for voice and video.
Nowaday, we use Skype for voice and MSN for video ... and it works (usually) quite well... we prefer skype for voice just because skype has better sound quality (specially when you're not using handset). However, I am also still using MSN for both Vo&Vi with some realtive which are less confortable on a PC to play with two apps, and it is also working quite well.
So although I can agree that MSN interface is not always easy and intuitive (motly beause it has so many -more- features that inherently add complexity to the GUI logic), I found that is not really fair to present it the way you do ;-)
PS1: Although I am not a microsoft supporter at all and trying to avoid using microsoft as much as possible, it sometime provide the most easy tools and the less unstable (although ...) in comparinson with the rest.
PS2: Skype is recent and they've been numerous of IM tools including Voice capabilities since many years. I (and I guess we) still don't know exactly why skype is picking up today much faster as any others, whereas what they are offering already exist since many years... but I do not think Skype sucess is due to others tools unability to offer the same! Otherwise I do you explain that Skype community is growing much faster than SIP community and this without need to peer with anyone else whereas SIP providers have peerign between eachothers which should be an advantage....
just my 0.2 cts which you were probably expecting ;-)
Posted by: at June 13, 2005 09:20 AMIt's perfectly fair to MSN! We both download the latest version onto fully-patched Windows XP boxes, fired it up, and it didn't work. Can't blame it on connectivity problems -- we'd just been using Skype.
Posted by: at June 13, 2005 10:03 AMThat's not quite fair. If my kids (13 and 11) can set up a video conference, you ought to be able to do so too? This reminds me of guys walking around with "Windoze" on their t-shirts.
What about e.g. MSN's implementation of the network based buddylist? It's a hell of a lot better that Skype's implementation, which is saving locally!
Don't get me wrong, I like both :-) MSn and Skype.
Cheers,
Willem de Boer - The Netherlands
Posted by: at June 13, 2005 02:28 PMThis is hilarious. I futzed with MS Messenger for year, and occasionally got it to work. I bet you didn't read the fine print and use a uPNP enabled router, now did you ... oh, don't have one of those, better go get it. oh, using a usb broadband connection, umm, too bad. Stuff like this is exactly why we are all using Skype.
Posted by: at June 13, 2005 04:26 PMVideo invitations work, but I had the same problem with audio only. MSN should use a motto like Skype, instead: 'It just (kinda sorta) works! (sometimes)'
For Whiteboarding/app sharing they force you to have XP SP2, otherwise a 'You don't have the latest version of MSN' message pops up
Posted by: at June 13, 2005 10:05 PMGiven time, could we make it work? Sure we could. In fact, we've used MSN for video conferencing in the past, as we have with Yahoo and a whole bunch of other apps out there. We'd be pretty crappy consultants if we didn't look around, and indeed shop around.
But that's not the point.
The point is that it didn't work out the of box, which is fine for the technically literate like yourself, your teenage kids and (I'd like to think) myself. But we are the minority. The majority are more fairly represented by, say, my mother, or the taxi drivers that shuttle me to and airports every week. They do not want to know what a uPNP router is, not perhaps, should they have to know in order to faciliate a duplex audio stream, which they've been doing for years with a device far less powerful than a PC.
As I said above, lets wait for the next patchset, and then see if they can make it work out of the box. Until then, I only want apps that don't require me to be first line support to my parents (sorry Mum, if you are still reading this).
R.
P.S. My router that for that evening was uPNP enabled, and I certainly don't have a puny USB broadband connection. Static IP address at Martin's end, and although technically I have a dynamic IP address, it hasn't changed for at least the last 18 months. NAT at my end, but suprised that would stop initiation of a session both ways.
Posted by: at June 13, 2005 10:35 PMWillem:
Skype is having a network based buddylist since a few months now (since version 1.2).
A agree 100% with Robin, this kind of apps just has to work. Not only for our moms, even for us geeks who use laptops and many different connections through the day. We don't want to have to go through the setup program every time.
Posted by: at June 14, 2005 02:56 PMHere's a funny thing: my router advertises itself on the box as having UPnP -- but it turns out the NAT traversal feature isn't supported! The only UPnP feature it has is basic status reporting.
Anyway, I use a static public IP address and no NAT, so no excuses there either.
Posted by: at June 15, 2005 01:11 AM