Skype отправлен в утиль в 05.05.2025

Skype превратился в тыкву 5-го мая 2025 года. Удивительно, что это программа дожила до наших дней, при этом её последние версии были вполне работоспособными на Windows 7 32-bit с 2 ГБ памяти.

Skype 5.2 for Windows is outdated

Последним вечером июля Skype "обрадовал" меня, запретив пользоваться версией 5.2 (5.2.60.113), которая меня вполне устраивала на Windows 7 - запускалась быстро, работала стабильно, потребляла немного ресурсов.

Ошибка выглядит таким образом:

We've signed you out because you're using an outdated version of Skype.

Skype vs ooVoo

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.

ooVoo offline installer for Windows

While searching for an alternative to Skype, I've discovered ooVoo - rather new software which provides for free the capabilities, that are not available in Skype: group videochat, video call recording, offline messages, etc.

For some unknown reason ooVoo web-installer hangs on my PC (Windows 7 x64 SP1), and there is no explicit link on the official site with another version of the installer.

After short googling I wasn't able to find the solution, but I've encountered the link to the offline full installer of ooVoo at the forum: http://cdn01.oovoo.com/download/ooVooSetup.msi (version 3.5.8.22).

I wonder why this handy installer isn't provided at the official site.

Anyway I've installed ooVoo, and it works rather good. I had no chance to test the group videochat and video call recording, but offline message are supported.

So it's time to get rid of Skype! :)

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Windows Live Essentials enable Windows Automatic Updating

I had been running Windows 7 (x64 SP1) with disabled Automatic Updating until I decided to have a look at Windows Live Writer, which is a part of Windows Live Essentials.

In short: Windows Live Writer is the same bloatware as it used to be, it still can't display raw HTML nicely, so I continue to rely on Chrysanth WebStory.

Moreover, Windows Live Essentials seem to install several updates and enable Automatic Updating without even letting you know or bothering to ask you. It looks like a normal Microsoft's practice to think of its users as dummies pushing OK buttons. Fie!

Next day my notebook crashed several times during startup - probably because the updater wasn't able to connect to a Microsoft server. After that everything looked normal except for the hardly noticeable slowdown of the system...

And today I've noticed that Skype (which is grabbed by Microsoft) just became a bit better - it has updated itself! WTF?!

I was very suprised to discover that Automatic Updating is now enabled, and Skype is like another system component from now on... The time has come to try its alternatives!

Luckily I keep images with the stable OS states, which save me a bunch of time after Windows happen to put a spell on me :)

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