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Why Skype Needs Competition

I'm looking for an alternative to Skype. I want a program that makes video chat efficient, comfortable and easy. Skype 'allows' video chat, between updates, bugs and fuckery, if you're lucky, but that's starting to seem more like a bug than a feature.

Mine turned black. Now, I love black. My girlfriend is black and so is my car. However, I like to have a modicum of control over things that happen on what used to be 'my' computer.  I'm old-school. I avoid TSR (kids don't know that such a definition ever existed, they don't what it means) when possible and my task manager is always open. Now TSR doesn't exist any more, no more than people who don't eat exist. Everyone eats. Every program steals your memory and processor for no reason whatsoever except reasons, and reasons is total control for marketing purposes. Nearly all programs think they can invade your property, bloating like gorged slugs in your RAM eating your bytes like locusts in the bible (that was a thing once too).

I like the black. I like it enough not to spend half an hour searching for ways to change it back to what I had before, which I also liked and was not black. Sadly, unless I'm willing to spend a lot of time researching, I'm stuck with black, which I like but did not choose. I don't like to learn, I like to rant.

So, my Skype changed colour suddenly. Did I say "my"? Oops, sorry. I guess it's free so I don't even have the rights of someone who rents. It's free so I shouldn't complain, but then again so is cancer. It stopped my video chat with no warning, informed me that it was updating, made both of us wait a lot of minutes, then reappeared as a completely different program, like Nicholas Travolta in that shit gunporn for old people. And black. Now, I have to leave the video to send a message, which for teaching, or humanity, is just fucking stupid.

When I move to the message window, the video becomes a thumb nail, about as big as the developers' brains (I'm making an assumption that there is more than one), and so, squinting between furrowed brows, I click back and forth, back and forth, all the way through the conversation.

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This is the problem with market dominance (can you say mon o po lee?). This is why you buy (sorry, rent) iPhone 9.1.0.1.2.3 with one added feature, which had been removed in the previous iteration for reasons but was in the one before. This is why we can't change languages in Windows - it only speaks American or gobbledegook and screw you if you want anything else.

Oh, and pity you if you happen to have a Microsoft email, because then Skype will send you every notification twice and every single time you log in you'll get to see your previous Skype conversations again, along with the sudden and annoying plastic beep that sounds like a sick pig puking up a powerball. It's been twenty years since You've Got Mail and no one needs an audible warning that tells you what you already know - that you're not popular but desperate for attention, and you will get it. You will get it and appreciate it! Unless of course Skype decides to close down and update DURING THE BEEP, which has low key happened to me.

So, I'm looking for an alternative to Skype, I need a program that necessitates video chats rather than doing whatever the hell Skype does. Send help.

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