8 replies to this topic

[bbqroast]

Well its only been what not even a week since MS bought Skype?
Yet I'm already seeing pains.

Lets see first of all I spent a while having a chat with a friend who was "offline" then I spent a while trying to find why I had a new message icon despite having checked all my contacts and requests and finally the error message that pops up whenever I go to my friends profile...

Whats your thoughts Codecall?

Oh yeah also this new "full screen" window is a joke...
What did we like about Skype??

We liked how it sat in are task bar or edge of are screen waiting for us. I MEAN HONESTLY! Its a contact list and a area for chat! And to make it worse every time I get a new message I have to clikc on "recent" and then click on their name, can't it just all be one tab???

[fayyazlodhi]

In addition when i make an audio call, it occupies nearly the whole screen and it took me at least 3 minutes to find where the invisible chat icon is so that i could type some text while a conference call is going on.

[fayyazlodhi]

That being said, i seriously doubt that 'with in this short span of time, it is MS who would have changed the skype's interface and other things'.

[Alexander]

I've not been on for a few weeks so it has kept my old version. In some settings (I was checking) it was trying to download an update and I had stopped it. Lets see if restricting port 80 and 443 stops it from autoupdating, I presume chatting and speaking do not use those ports.

[fayyazlodhi]

Sure - Skype has the ability to get through firewalls so even if it does attempt to use 443 (which it generally doesn't because it runs a proprietary encryption rather than SSL which is 443), it will still just open up another port and get data across.

But i have doubts about restricting port 80 because it is the most reliable port that any firewall is still expected to have kept open and i think a lot of skype traffic encapsulates itself in http too.

Still, if 80 is blocked it would open up another connection and get through. Interesting thing would be to check if it does actually try out 80 or not, before using other ports.

[lor]

IMO I couldn't really care, I'm not going to start picking at everything now just because Microsoft is the new owner. Just because MS have taken over doesn't mean they've booted all the existing programmers and designers, etc, so I really don't see why everyone is blaming their problems on Microsoft. For now anyway.

[fayyazlodhi]

lor said:

IMO I couldn't really care, I'm not going to start picking at everything now just because Microsoft is the new owner. Just because MS have taken over doesn't mean they've booted all the existing programmers and designers, etc, so I really don't see why everyone is blaming their problems on Microsoft. For now anyway.

Agreed lor - That's why i said above that i don't believe it is MS who made all the changes to be blamed for. The other aspect about restricting access through firewall is perceived as a positive quality of SKYPE i.e. it takes a lot of effort to bypass firewalls and NATs so i don't think me or Alex really supported blaming it on MS.

[bbqroast]

Yeah but I'm just saying, Skype 5 is hell and I think MS did have time to override my option to hide advertisement (even with it checked I still receive a giant banner whenever I click on my profile!).

...
Its also a shame, seeing yet another program picked up by a super giant, this is how the Net becomes incompatible- One company owns everything and sees no reason to follow standarsds such as W3C...

[Alexander]

My Skype appears to be from 2010 (5.1 not 5.3), must've broken its updater somehow, I dare just keep it as it is.

I was imagining an open source VoIP client which could interface with Skype clients, I had read that their protocol is closed source however, a shame. However I may be a bearer of hope here, FileHippo seems to have older versions of Skype (versions on the right hand column):
Download Skype 5.3.0.111 - FileHippo.com

And with patience, and appending skype's update servers to your HOSTS or /etc/hosts file - you could possibly keep your older version like me. A helpful post on the skype community shows a way:
Skype 5 auto-update - Skype Community - Page 2

However it may had changed since the post.