What is Zoom?

[Karl]

What is Zoom?

 

[Bantamzen]

What is Zoom?

Zoom is a video conferencing service that has offered limited free use during the pandemic.

 

[Karl]

Zoom is a video conferencing service that has offered limited free use during the pandemic.

Thanks. I'm a bit behind the times. Kids these days are way ahead of me. My daughter would laugh at me!

 

[Bantamzen]

Thanks. I'm a bit behind the times. Kids these days are way ahead of me. My daughter would laugh at me!

No worries, even as someone who works in IT I've barely used it & hadn't heard much about it before March!

 

[DB]

No worries, even as someone who works in IT I've barely used it & hadn't heard much about it before March!

I knew of it and had encountered it once or twice, but that's about it. I doubt if it'll last - it's rather a one-trick pony and its best features are being copied by other platforms, which do more in the way of other things already.

It's also pretty expensive for what it does - monthly subscriptions would cost us more than Office 365, which does way more and includes Teams.

 

[jtuk]

Teams is awful resource hogging software though, will leave that there so as not to divert wildly off thread

 

[Bletchleyite]

Teams is awful resource hogging software though, will leave that there so as not to divert wildly off thread

Finally, somebody who agrees with me. A great idea implemented absolutely terribly - typical M$.

 

[Bantamzen]

I knew of it and had encountered it once or twice, but that's about it. I doubt if it'll last - it's rather a one-trick pony and its best features are being copied by other platforms, which do more in the way of other things already.

It's also pretty expensive for what it does - monthly subscriptions would cost us more than Office 365, which does way more and includes Teams.

Yeah, I use 365/Teams both at work and personally (helped by my employer being part of the home user programme).

 

[DB]

Teams is awful resource hogging software though, will leave that there so as not to divert wildly off thread

That's as may be (and I don't disagree) - but by being part of Office it'll still get used a lot!

 

[Yew]

Thanks. I'm a bit behind the times. Kids these days are way ahead of me. My daughter would laugh at me!

Understandable, until February I hadn't heard of it either.

 

[Trackman]

Understandable, until February I hadn't heard of it either.

same here, if someone asked me what Zoom was before then I would say an ice lolly!

 

[Barn]

Interesting stat at the beginning of lockdown - the company that owns Zoom apparently gained a market capitalisation higher than the world's seven largest airline groups put together.

 

[nlogax]

Zoom is excellent (though less excellent than it was) for video calls and bridges, certainly a gazillion percent better than Webex, the sound and video quality of which continues to have an early 2000s-like vibe to it.

Teams.. now that the conferencing tech from Skype for Business is built-in, that bit works pretty well. It's a shame that the rest of the app appears to have had design input from half of Microsoft. The application tries to be all things to all people and as a result is almost impossible to intuitively navigate.

 

[The Ham]

Understandable, until February I hadn't heard of it either.

The company my wife works for had been using it a bit prior to lockdown but even then most had quite a steep learning curve for the more advanced features.

Whilst Teams had some good features I suspect that the reason Zoom is used quite a bit is that you can have others join without needing to have an account (although this also caused problems like Zoom Bombing - getting into a Zoom meeting and causing problems from shouting to sharing screens with potentially inappropriate content).

Other benefits include being able to call in using any phone to be able to hear what's going on.

 

[edwin_m]

Zoom is excellent (though less excellent than it was) for video calls and bridges, certainly a gazillion percent better than Webex, the sound and video quality of which continues to have an early 2000s-like vibe to it.

Teams.. now that the conferencing tech from Skype for Business is built-in, that bit works pretty well. It's a shame that the rest of the app appears to have had design input from half of Microsoft. The application tries to be all things to all people and as a result is almost impossible to intuitively navigate.

We went onto Teams not long before lockdown having used Webex before that. I don't notice much difference in sound and video quality and for conferencing Teams has some annoying features like the toolbar blocks part of the presenter's screen and can't be moved. I get the impression since lockdown they've been continuously tweaking it and throwing out new versions without necessarily testing them fully. It also needs much more control over notifications to get rid of the irrelevant distractions while still being alerted to what's important.

I received a consent request from Zoom despite not knowingly ever having used it - must have been one of several external webinars I've attended. From the questions it sounded like they were trying to harvest data to build themselves into a rival to LinkedIn.

 

[nlogax]

I received a consent request from Zoom despite not knowingly ever having used it - must have been one of several external webinars I've attended. From the questions it sounded like they were trying to harvest data to build themselves into a rival to LinkedIn.

Even sneakier than that.

https://mashable.com/article/zoom-linkedin-data-collection/

Zoom was secretly mining LinkedIn data and sharing it with some users

It’s becoming pretty clear that Zoom was not ready for the influx of users it received due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The latest issue: the service was secretly collecting LinkedIn data and sharing personal information with certain users in Zoom meetings.

According to a report from the New York Times, when a user would enter a video conference, Zoom would take that person’s name and email address and run it through an internal system. This system would then match the name and email of the Zoom user with their LinkedIn profile information.

So, why was this such a problem? Zoom would take the LinkedIn profile data and connect it to the user’s Zoom account, allowing other people in the meeting to view the user’s real name, employer, job title, and location. Zoom did this without notifying the user or asking their permission. The video conferencing platform was able to match a user’s real LinkedIn profile with their Zoom name, even if they weren’t using their real name on the platform.

 

[JamesT]

The company my wife works for had been using it a bit prior to lockdown but even then most had quite a steep learning curve for the more advanced features.

Whilst Teams had some good features I suspect that the reason Zoom is used quite a bit is that you can have others join without needing to have an account (although this also caused problems like Zoom Bombing - getting into a Zoom meeting and causing problems from shouting to sharing screens with potentially inappropriate content).

Other benefits include being able to call in using any phone to be able to hear what's going on.

Teams is fairly quickly catching up features-wise. It used to only handle 2x2 for videos, now it can do 7x7. If your organisation is appropriately configured you can invite anyone by email address rather than needing an account. I believe you should be able to dial into a Teams meeting with a normal phone call, though my organisation has that featured turned off.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Teams is fairly quickly catching up features-wise. It used to only handle 2x2 for videos, now it can do 7x7. If your organisation is appropriately configured you can invite anyone by email address rather than needing an account. I believe you should be able to dial into a Teams meeting with a normal phone call, though my organisation has that featured turned off.

Yes, I've dialled into a Teams meeting.

But Teams will continue to be rubbish for as long as M$ don't invest properly into its performance. It runs like a dog (an old one) and slows down any machine noticeably. The UI is terrible, too.

 

[Hadders]

Where I work we've got a new version of Teams, the toolbar has moved to the top of the screen. We're getting telephony added which will mean we will be able to dial into Teams meetings using an 0207 or 0800 number which can be useful at times (we currently have this functionality in Skype for Business but that is being retired soon by Microsoft)

 

[edwin_m]

Where I work we've got a new version of Teams, the toolbar has moved to the top of the screen. We're getting telephony added which will mean we will be able to dial into Teams meetings using an 0207 or 0800 number which can be useful at times (we currently have this functionality in Skype for Business but that is being retired soon by Microsoft)

We have had telephony for some time (I guess that might be something that individual companies choose to subscribe to or not). if we get the relocated toolbar!

 

[DelayRepay]

We use Teams, and occasionally use Zoom.

I like Teams but I agree with @Bletchleyite about the performance. I'm not a techy person but my computer seems much slower when Teams is open, even if not taking part in a meeting. Which is a shame given the intent is obviously for Teams to be open all the time.

They are becoming more Zoom-like, according to their blog



(Image shows a screenshot of a Teams meeting with a 7 x 6 grid of participants).

 

[JamesT]

I don't know how how much of Teams' poor performance is down to it being an Electron app. Which is basically Javascript (node.js) running in a dedicated instance of Chrome. This does have the advantage that it should be easily cross-platform, but is never going to be as efficient as a native application.

 

[Peter C]

Zoom is really good for these quizzes people have been doing with family and friends during lockdown - you can have two devices joined on the same call for as long as you want (more than two and it's a limit of 45 minutes). Note that it's devices, not people - that confused a friend when there were going to be six on one call but on two devices

-Peter

 

[nlogax]

Zoom is really good for these quizzes people have been doing with family and friends during lockdown - you can have two devices joined on the same call for as long as you want (more than two and it's a limit of 45 minutes). Note that it's devices, not people - that confused a friend when there were going to be six on one call but on two devices

Have to admit I'm getting a bit tired of Zoom pub quizzes and Zoom beers and Zoom comedy nights and Zoom this-that-and-the-other. I spend six or seven hours of my working day on video calls and the last thing I want to do after closing the work laptop is open the personal one and fire up Zoom again

 

[Peter C]

Have to admit I'm getting a bit tired of Zoom pub quizzes and Zoom beers and Zoom comedy nights and Zoom this-that-and-the-other. I spend six or seven hours of my working day on video calls and the last thing I want to do after closing the work laptop is open the personal one and fire up Zoom again

I can understand what you mean
I've been doing the odd Zoom quiz and they're quite fun but computer problems often jump in when they're least expected!

-Peter

 

[DB]

I get the impression since lockdown they've been continuously tweaking it and throwing out new versions without necessarily testing them fully.

That's standard Microsoft practice with everything as a matter of course! It's certainly not started recently.

 

[pdq]

At the start of lockdown my employer invested in Zoom licenses so they could control the settings at an enterprise level and provide integration with active directory and Outlook. We were already in the process of moving to Teams but they weren't quite there at the time.
We now have Teams working - but a lot of people are sticking with Zoom as it just works better an is easier to use. In particular for the way I work, Teams doesn't allow multi-screen use, where I can drag someone's shared screen to one monitor and still see the participants on another. We've also seen compatibility issues with cameras/graphics drivers that we don't see on Zoom. My Microsoft Surface Pro 3, for example, keeps losing its video on Teams but is fine with Teams.

 

[DB]

At the start of lockdown my employer invested in Zoom licenses so they could control the settings at an enterprise level and provide integration with active directory and Outlook. We were already in the process of moving to Teams but they weren't quite there at the time.
We now have Teams working - but a lot of people are sticking with Zoom as it just works better an is easier to use. In particular for the way I work, Teams doesn't allow multi-screen use, where I can drag someone's shared screen to one monitor and still see the participants on another. We've also seen compatibility issues with cameras/graphics drivers that we don't see on Zoom. My Microsoft Surface Pro 3, for example, keeps losing its video on Teams but is fine with Teams.

Not sure that many companies will stick with Zoom other than for the short to medium term - it gets very expensive for what it is if you have a lot of users, and Microsoft is closing the functionality gap between it and Teams. The performance of Teams has also improved over the past few months, although more improvement is still needed.

 

[pdq]

Not sure that many companies will stick with Zoom other than for the short to medium term - it gets very expensive for what it is if you have a lot of users, and Microsoft is closing the functionality gap between it and Teams. The performance of Teams has also improved over the past few months, although more improvement is still needed.

Indeed - we'll be ending our Zoom license by the end of the year I would think. I agree that the gap is closing - but it's not there yet. And the lower levels of Zoom subscriptions continue to be a reasonably priced option for societies/clubs etc to keep in touch with their members without worrying about the 45 minute cutoff, and for 1-1 music teaching for example. Zoom had the right product at the right time and now have a name that's become synonymous with mass market video conference.

 

[nlogax]

Not sure that many companies will stick with Zoom other than for the short to medium term - it gets very expensive for what it is if you have a lot of users, and Microsoft is closing the functionality gap between it and Teams. The performance of Teams has also improved over the past few months, although more improvement is still needed.

We've been using Zoom quite happily it since late 2017, but with MS rapidly developing Teams I do wonder if our corporate Zoom usage will continue as Teams is already part of the wider MS 365 plan. Thankfully those decisions happen half the world away and several levels above my corner of the ..Zoom is a very well liked bit of software compared with Teams and it wouldn't be a popular thing to communicate.