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Comment by anon4 | Hacker News Reader

Skype is shit, but Hangouts is not even a contender

* No desktop client

* Connected to your google account meaning I'll need to juggle several google accounts to keep my personal and business chats separate

Just the fact it doesn't have a native desktop client makes it unusable. I know there are workarounds I can use like nativefier but it's still not as smooth as a desktop app.

Running in the browser:

- Gets grouped with my other browser windows in my taskbar, making it hard to find

- Notifications might or might not work, depending on firefox's whims

- If for any reason firefox crashes all your communication crashes with it

- Susceptible to every single browser bug that allows silent loading of extensions that scrape all your data

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> No desktop client

Seeing the level of shitty ported Linux programs I see this as a pro.

> Connected to your google account meaning I'll need to juggle several google accounts to keep my personal and business chats separate

This would be easier with Skype if you have 2 Skype accounts?

When using Chrome:

> - Gets grouped with my other browser windows in my taskbar, making it hard to find

Menu -> More tools -> Add to desktop

>> Connected to your google account meaning I'll need to juggle several google accounts to keep my personal and business chats separate >This would be easier with Skype if you have 2 Skype accounts?

to some extent. depending on how you start a hangouts, you have no idea what account it's going to start under. The number of times I've gotten on a work call on my personal account because google felt it should use that one

I know each Chrome window can be logged into a different account so I wonder if it just uses the last window (and therefore account) you interacted with. That seems to be the case with links I click on in general. It would be nice if they let you select a "default" account or prompted you for google-specific links.

It's trivial with skype. You just start two instances. On Windows, you need to use a third-party tool, on Linux it's as easy as setting HOME to a different folder for the second instance.

>> No desktop client

> Seeing the level of shitty ported Linux programs I see this as a pro.

Well, google manages to make a shitty Linux port of the plugin, so they've got their bases covered there.

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=363358

> * No desktop client Uhmmm... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-hangouts/kn... ... You don't even need to have Chrome open, just installed.

(Tedious disclaimer: my opinions only, not representing anybody else or my employer. I work at Google, not on hangouts)

These problems are largely resolved by using chrome. Pop out any tab into its own window, notifications will work reliably, the security model is far stronger, and most important of all: when one tab crashes, it's an independent process so it can't take any other tab with it.

I use this every day without seeing any of these issues.

I'm sorry, but I use my 32GB of RAM for useful work. Once I upgrade to 64GB I'll consider allocating half of it for Chrome.

I used to make this joke when I put 32GB of RAM in my workstation, to devote 16 to Chrome.

At some point, life started imitating art.

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