HELP!

[Hawkmoon]

As usual, I find myself caught in a technological time warp. Someone please enlighten me.

Since the advent of the COVID-19 isolation and the proliferation of people working from home, all of a sudden all I'm hearing about is people holding virtual meetings on Zoom. I know Zoom is an app (or a program?) I see on their web site that there's a free personal plan. So ...

What's different and/or better about Zoom than Skype?

[Ben]

I haven't been in the working world for a while, but I would assume Zoom is just like Webex, vs like Skype, but it looks like it's cheaper to use than Webex (or apparently free in some cases).  I see that Google has recently released "Meet" which appears to be a competitor to Webex and Zoom.

[Devonai]

My squadron used Webex for our "virtual" drill this month. It went fine even with 100 people logged on at the same time.

[Perd Hapley]

I thought hearing everyone suddenly talking about App X as if everyone was already using it on the reg was just a part of life for those of us over 30. I had the same thing with Vine, TikTok, Periscope. Slack, too, but that's more of a business thing I guess.

[Ben]

My squadron used Webex for our "virtual" drill this month. It went fine even with 100 people logged on at the same time.

We used it in my part of the gov too. For as expensive as it is (or was then) it's pretty rock solid. I recall we tried switching a couple of times but always went back to them.

[BobR]

The VA is moving away from Skype and going to MSN Meetings. There is also Webex. Webex will support many more people than Skype can at a single time. I have no idea about MSN Meetings, I haven't used it yet and it looks as though I won't.

bob

[Kingcreek]

I have recently had to participate in zoom meetings and Microsoft Teams app which IMO is much better, can securely host store and share documents etc. I don’t know what a license cost but I don’t imagine it’s cheap. The google meet is what our school district is using and the IT folks are happy with it.
Zoom had a bunch of security issues at one time.

[bedlamite]

What's different and/or better about Zoom than Skype?

Zoom is owned by a Chinese company and stores their encryption keys over there, so I'm assuming Xi can get access to whatever meeting he wants.

[MillCreek]

We are using Zoom for our telemedicine meetings with patients.  Up until recently, we used Skype for Business internally, but we are in the midst of switching to Microsoft Teams as our meeting and instant messaging client.

[MechAg94]

I have used Google Hangouts and Webex at work.  My employer has gone nearly all Google as far as applications and such.  Both work fine as long as you have a decent network.  They tried to use them for all employee meetings but the network at our corporate office got a bit overloaded.