I apologize for my ignorance of Telecommunications and Computer Science.
The Washington Post recently did a comparison where they used all of the available programs and tested them on a variety of factors. They concluded that Zoom was the simplest and best.
Thanks. I have been talking to myself recently. One of me was on my phone, another one on Zoom.
At work we use Zoom and Googlehangouts, which both work well equally well for us.
Some of our clients use Microsoft Teams, which seems limited in comparison.
We use MS Teams. Zoom is fine as long as you’re not worried about all your meetings going through Chinese servers.
If all the meetings were going through Chinese servers, there’d be a lot more lag than there is.
Thanks. I learned Zoom. Maybe I will learn the other programs later.
One other thing: How good a communications system is is not something that exists in a vacuum. Even if you made a program that was objectively better than Zoom in every way, it still wouldn’t be be better. Because a communications system is only useful because it lets you communicate with others, and the more people it lets you communicate with, the better. Nowadays, lots of people have Zoom, but nobody has your new program, and that fact alone makes Zoom more useful.
Microsoft Teams is better than Zoom, if you need to do real collaboration.
In what ways?
I do a lot of business with other companies that require video conferencing (BIG companies with valuable corporate secrets). Many of them…most in fact…absolutely prohibit their employees from using Zoom. As in, no company business of any sort done over it and forbidden from even putting it on a company owned computer.
Not kidding. They are kind of freakish about it. Zoom has had a bad rep for security and while they are working on that the chances that the Chinese government is listening in is probably pretty good.
I seriously doubt the Chinese government cares about your chat with your mom and Zoom is great for such things. That said, if you care about your privacy, you might want to use something else.
It’s not just the encryption weaknesses the compromise Zoo users; the ability of neferious parties to upload spywear and other malicious software is the more egregious oversight. I would not use Zoom to host a toddler’s birthday party much less conduct any important work.
This has not been my experience, which was more a regular staccato buffering of audio and video, dropped participants, and occasionally spontaneously terminating the meeting. I think Teams may be the worst product that Microsoft has ever deployed, and that includes Windows ME, Bing, the Windows Phone, and “Clippy”. Every time my boss says, “We really need to get everyone on Teams!” I respond with, “Why do you want to destroy morale?”
If you can’t make a product better than WebEx—and that wouldn’t seem to be a herculean challenge given Cisco’s indifferent support for a product that doesn’t sell any hardware—then just don’t bother. I swear, Microsoft is just running an experiment to see just how badly conceived and executed their products could be while still making a profit.
Stranger
Teams came with my company’s office subscription and when we all started working from home in March, we started playing with it. The only time we’ve had bad connections in meetings is when my boss tries to call in from his farm.
I don’t think I’ve had any major issues and a lot of stuff like screensharing seems to go a lot smoother than gotomeeting which we were using for that stuff before.
I also like being able to have multiple editors on docs uploaded to teams. Does zoom do that too?
It really depends what you’re using it for (and what your budget and other constraints are). I use Zoom and Google Meet interchangeably all day, and have used Jitsy, WebEx, and Microsoft Teams enough to be familiar and comfortable with them.
Google Meet is definitely easier for first-time use than Zoom (nothing to download, nothing to install). But there aren’t that many first-time users out there anymore since almost everyone has used Zoom. Once you’ve got Zoom installed, it’s pretty much equal in ease of use to Google Meet.
But that’s just ease–there are a lot of other factors.
Here’s my rundown of some of what I’ve learned–
Google Meet. Pros: Easy. Free. Do not need a google account or any kind of login. Very stable and tolerant of poor bandwidth. One HUGE plus–Google Meet does live, synchronous closed captioning with good accuracy. This is critical for hearing-impaired users and often handy for others (those who are in environments where they can’t have a speaker turned up, and don’t have headphones). Very good video quality (auto adjusting). No time limit for meetings even in free version. Recording works very well and automatically stores recordings in a google drive account. Some missing features (tiled view and hand raising are the major examples) are not available out of the box, but work fine with Google Chrome extensions (free). Drawbacks–no waiting room, no breakout rooms, no way to mute all users at once. No whiteboard. Little control over who can use screen sharing. Somewhat intolerant of underpowered machines with a lot of background apps running. Does require an app to be installed (but it’s free and works well) on mobile devices.
Zoom: The default these days so everyone knows it. (but that means it’s more subject to attack). Very good control over who can do what (if you are aware and use the settings properly). Breakout rooms are a great feature for large groups. Easy to use and all the features. Fairly stable. Drawbacks: free version has a 40-minute limit on meetings (Zoom has been inconsistently extending that for free but it’s not reliable). To get all the features, you need to pay, although a personal account is not that expensive. Prices go up steeply if you want the full set for a business or enterprise.
Microsoft Teams. Good if everyone using it is technically skilled and in the same organization. Terrible for inviting outsiders and having them know what to do. WAY too many confusing settings and features for most users. Extremely ugly and counter-intuitive interface. For techies by techies, not for normal humans.
Jitsy. Fully free! And open source! Serviceable if you just need the very basics. Not big on extra features, but for the basics it’s actually better than the others (more stable, better quality, more tolerant of poor connections). SUPER easy to use and to invite people. No accounts, no installations needed. Just use it.
If you want something simple, Zoom is probably the easiest to use. As long as you don’t mind some of the drawbacks, like the early hacking that happened (Zoom bombs and all) and the fact it’s a Chinese company for all intents and purposes, meaning there is CCP involvement, or could be. Most people don’t care about that stuff though, so if you aren’t a government entity and just doing this for yourself I’d say stick with what you know and like.
Alternatives I can think of off the top of my head are WebEx and GoTo Meeting, as well as Teams and Google’s meeting software. Those are probably the big ones. We use WebEx in my office, mainly because they have an API that ties into the State’s streaming service, but also because we weren’t allowed to use Zoom because of security concerns.
The courthouse where I work is currently using WebEx for remote appearances. It’s very similar to Zoom, so it’s an easy transition if you’re worried about Zoom’s security issues, or if 40 minutes isn’t enough and you don’t want to pay. It works pretty well most of the time.
On the other hand, my employer is switching from WebEx Meetings/Cisco Jabber to Zoom. One advantage for the user is that Zoom is one program for meetings and instant messaging and it uses my network account for logging in. WebEx required us to set up a separate account on Cisco’s website, and Jabber required us to set up another, completely separate account on Cisco’s website.
I have found Cisco’s stuff to be HUGELY annoying to use. So, so, so consumer unfriendly.
It is made by tech geeks for tech geeks so only tech geeks can run it.
My impression is Cisco is meant for HUGE companies. So everything is divided a million way to Sunday so each department can have their piece.
For users they absolutely suck to use. So, so, so annoying. Very much considering cancelling our subscription (they are far less expensive solutions out there).
That said, Cisco does have it all and great security…if you can figure it all out (good luck with that).
Definitely, now Zoom is the best program. Maybe I will learn some other progs in the future.
Just to chat – nothing scientific.