I’m a huge fan of Skype. We use it at PC-Prime as a regular phone and I use the video portion on a weekly basis. When Skype 4.0 came out I was a little nervous about it due to its full screen. I decided to install it after a hard drive crash wiped out my main computer sytem (don’t be cheap like me and fail to replace an important fan.)
I gotta tell you, Skype 4.0 was just atrocious. The fullscreen didn’t bother me as much I thought it would. I see where they are going but there was still plenty of wasted space too me. What really bothered me was the actualy phone calls. I used Skype 4.0 several times to make sure it wasn’t just a ‘bad internet’ night.
- I have SkypeIn and SkypeOut. Incoming calls from cellphones were really full of static. Hard to hear the individual.
- I had assumed that they would have maintained the same technology for the video as well. I was flat wrong. Picture very fuzzy and choppy. No matter what I did, myself nor the other individual on the call, could get a clear pic for more than a few seconds.
- Dropped calls. I would occasionally get a dropped call on Skype 3.x which includes last night. However, Skype 4.0 would give me multiple dropped calls in the same night. That is just unacceptable.
- The fullscreen is an interesting concept that should be an OPTION and not mandatory. Everytime I reboot the computer Skype loads up. Which is what I want, but I shouldn’t have to minimize it every single time. The small footprint Skype 3.x had was great to leave on the screen.
Overall, stay away until they get the bugs worked out. One of the prevailing issues that Skype has had against it is the lack of support. Fortunately, I know enough about computers that I don’t need customer service. Plus, I’m not really sure what kind of support they could give me if I have a staticy call? I’m sure it’s a bandwidth issue that needs to be addressed. In any event, Skpye 3.x is excellent but they need to regroup with Skype 4.0 Beta.