Recently I had a chance to test-drive ooVoo for video calls on a Windows PC. In the past I had been using Skype for all video call, but its state-of-the-art behavior makes me sick.
I already complained about inevitable forced updates which Skype doesn't allow to disable - they are downloaded in any case, and you are prompted with the update again and again... until you set no-access permissions for "?:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Temp\SkypeSetup.exe". I guess, MS will take care of this "exploit" in future versions, but basically I don't care - I'm using Skype 5.2, and is ready to drop it as soon as a decent alternative is found. And there are quite a few of them already on the free market...
The most promising is ooVoo (see the hint how to get its offline installer): video conferences, offline messages, video recording are the features you won't find in Skype for free.
I haven't tested the video conferencing yet, and the othere features are quite good, though ooVoo isn't mature enough: it is like two major versions behind Skype, so it will probably take a couple of years to make ooVoo as stable and friendly as it should.
There is a community forum for ooVoo, which you can try to reach the support and speak up. The forum seems to be hand-made though - another invented wheel which requires improvents :)
The major difference between ooVoo and Skype is in the communication approach: while Skype has been grown from one-to-one channel, ooVoo aims to bite off the many-to-many niche. Once you become thinking this way, you understand why some ooVoo's features look and behave queerly.
The first thing you'll be annoyed at is the lack of integration of the chat and video - they are a kind of separate parts in ooVoo. Surprise!
| Chat Window | Video Call Window | Call History Window |
|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
The second thing I'm annoyed at is the inability to make the video window sticky on top of other windows. Moreover this window hardly allocates its quarter for a counterparty's image - luxurious waste of my screen space.
The video quality is very good if compared against Skype. If you have a high-res Web-camera and high-speed bandwidth, you'll certainly enjoy High-Definition video. At my location I can use high quality video only to make occasional screenshots during one-to-one conversation. I wonder, whether my Internet bandwidth is speedy enough to carry on conferences.
Here is the feature-by-feature comparison table. I've listed only the functionality, which is essential for me.
| Skype 5.2.60.113 | ooVoo 3.5.9.56 | |
|---|---|---|
| GENERAL | ||
| Multiple logins | ☺Yes | No, other clients are logged off |
| Encrypted communication | Yes? | No |
| AUDIO | ||
| Audio connection test | Echo / Sound Test Service | No |
| Unmute speaker on connect | ☺Yes | No |
| VIDEO | ||
| Video connection test | No | No |
| Video window on top | ☺Yes | No |
| Minimize own video | ☺Yes, inside the frame | No, only static thumbnail |
| Screen sharing | ☺Yes | ☺Yes |
| Video conference | Paid feature | ☺Yes (free for up to 12 participants) |
| Video recording | Paid feature? | ☺Yes, FLV-format |
| Video messages | No | ☺Yes (hosted at YouTube) |
| CHAT | ||
| Storage | Stored locally | Stored locally |
| History | All | Only ~100 last messages are loaded |
| Calls in chat history | ☺Yes | No, stored separately |
| Offline messages | No | ☺Yes |
As you can see ooVoo is as rich in features as Skype is, and even more. Of course, you would miss few of them, and certainly encounter some bugs. But I hope, one day, they all will be resolved, so I'm able to fire Skype... unless it goes open-source :)
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