[abawany]

For me Skype has been great for years. Sure the Windows Store version was unusable but switching back to the regular version fixed issues for me. I saw it used at my last workplace to great savings - they used it to speak to their offshore person for free. We switched to Slack there but Skype continued to be used for voice communications.

Microsoft also owns GroupMe (www.groupme.com) and that solution has been pretty cool as well. I was surprised to find how focused Microsoft has quietly become on messaging products.

[Coding_Cat]

That doesn't sound so much as Skype being good as VOIP being good too you. Skype itself in my experience, and all those I know, has been abhorrent. Chat messages appearing out of order and once literally months later, incorrect status indicators, automatic noise cancelling messes up the volume sometimes (it seems to happen when the signal/noise plummets for a bit) forcing you to recall to get usable audio levels again, multi-platform support is a joke, having to delete %appdata% every other update in order to be able to log in, intrusive ads, a lack of audio device at startup seems to freeze up any windows audio afterwards until Skype is killed (This could be Windows itself ofc, but it's both Microsoft)...

As an aside, this is regular old Skype, I've heard it being said that "Skype for Business" is a completely different program.

[abawany]

I remember performing the periodic AppData cleanup in 2009/2010 but haven't had to do that in the last few years. It was during that time that the chat delay issues were very common as well. From my point of view, while the Microsoft takeover and remake initially brought difficulties with login, the recent versions were not too bad apart from the Windows 8 Store version mess. But that is just my experience.

While I personally don't use the chat functionality that often anymore, the few times I have used it (say when an interview was being done over Skype), it worked ok but I realize that is hardly a high-use model. I agree that other messaging solutions such as Hangouts, HipChat, Slack, GroupMe, and etc. appear to perform much more seamlessly without needing to be aware of idiosyncrasies.

[Coding_Cat]

For me their still the occasional problem. Perhaps it is related to Windows 7?

[abawany]

Unfortunately, I can't say - I use it on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, along with Android without issues. One thing I do that Skype appears to discourage is restart the application. This means don't allow it to launch on startup, I don't save my password (this is my practice with most apps), and I kill it if I know I won't need it; the latter is not practical if you need to be in constant touch with teams. I am not sure if any of this is a factor in my experience.

[Shorel]

In my experience, it happens if your computer's local time is not set up correctly.

[dceddia]

Pretty sure Skype for Business (at least on OS X) is a rebranded Lync client. In fact, on OS X, it's not even rebranded ;)