[wallabie]

My French language classes, typically held in person after work, moved to online and over Zoom. Initially, we tried Google Meet and found it laggy and that we would often drop out. Then we moved to Zoom and it has been a much better experience. The interface is more intuitive, has a few more features and somehow the quality has improved and the connection is much smoother. I care deeply about my privacy, but I'm lucky that we don't discuss anything sensitive in our classes such that the security issues and the lack of encryption would become a big deal.

EDIT: We tried Meet, not Hangouts.

[vijaybritto]

What about Google Meet? Did you try it? I heard that its performing okay.

[InvaderFizz]

We're a Gsuite shop, so we've been using Meet since before WFH.

It's fine, not great, but the connection seems stable and we have not experienced issues with conferences. Zoom is all that plus much more intuitive and easier to use. The entire Zoom experience is great from start to finish, built in background replacement is a really big draw along with the full tile layout (Meet got tiles two weeks ago).

I would also say that Discord video has been great too. It's only downside is that you can only be in a session on one device. That is an extremely annoying limitation as I prefer to be mobile on my phone headset and present or stream on the computer.

[bigiain]

> It's fine, not great

Exactly what we've found with our GSuite and Google Meet. Works fine with 8-12 people on a call. Useable by technically adept people, but we've had to talk clients through the interface sometimes. (From today- client: "How do I share my screen" me: "click the [share screen] text in the bottom right" client: "Oh, yeah. Of course.")

(If you want background replacement enough, OBS and VirtualCam lets you do it... I did it for a gag the other week to put myself inside a Russian nuclear powerplant control room for standup. It's not something I'd recommend telling anybody who's then gonna ask you to help them set it up though...)

[kccqzy]

I don't understand this though. I use both Google Meet and Zoom. On both platforms there are people who don't know how to use basic features labeled by buttons with descriptive text, and I don't even blame them because in a meeting when everyone's listening to you it's easy to have "brain farts" like this. On Zoom there's even the additional issue of "joining computer audio" even. I think this has more to do with people's personalities (perhaps triggering a form of stage fright) than the software.

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

Thanks for giving this overview! Are you using the web version or the Zoom app?

(I suspect many people on HN are using the web version because Zoom pushes their app aggressively and in an abusive way, which immediately makes the more paranoid among us decide that they don't want it. And I've heard that the installed version is great while the web version is not.)

[cesarb]

Last time I tried, the web version of Zoom required you to create an account (even when using Chromium and the trick of canceling the download twice to make it show the web version link). The app, on the other hand, does not require creating an account.

[InvaderFizz]

I use the iOS and Windows Clients.

[vijaybritto]

Thats true and the only annoyance I have with Zoom is that its bad for screen sharing. To much of jitter and its terrible for sharing code screens. Microsoft Teams is much better most likely cause its P2P I guess.

[algesten]

Shameless plug: https://goteam.video

Trying to provide an alternative to zoom/google.

I wrote the UI and my friend did the backend. One key point for me personally is doing privacy right. No identifiable data in logs etc. Tricky cause there will always be an element of "trust us".

Next weekend I hope to implement the experimental e2ee feature in WebRTC. Only for chrome so far, but maybe it'll take off for all browsers.

[vijaybritto]

This is pretty neat. But pls add a couple of screen shots of the app in the landing page

[algesten]

Thanks for the idea! I'll forward it to my designer :)