More Reliability Problems at Skype

It seems there was another round of connectivity/reliability problems at Skype this past weekend. From their own Heartbeat Blog:

Some of you who've just tried opening Payment In Client window, making a call to Online number, making a purchase or using any other service, may have noticed some difficulties to do so. You may have received some error such as "Internal error" from the web or "Check your connection" from the Skype Client

Of course, as always, the entry concludes with empty promises to investigate and "share information". This is exactly the same empty promise that was made for the entry "Problems signing in, making calls to landlines and mobiles" on Jan 29, and the entry "Sign in server problems" on Jan 21. All three are marked "Resolved", with no additional information provided about how, why or what went wrong. I suppose that Skype's idea of "sharing information" with their "beloved customers" is adding "Resolved" to the blog entry title.

The positive side of this is that these sorts of unexplained problems are making it a lot easier for me to convince my friends who are still using Skype what a load of unreliable rubbish it really is, and to get them to get rid of it.

Of course, I can't tell people "ditch Skype" without an option, so the two places I point them are ooVoo (my favorite, a good product with good support) and TokBox, a newer product that seems to be gaining a good following.

jw 2/2/2010