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Comment by RHSeeger | Hacker News Reader

Every time I see I have a meeting with MS Teams, I get annoyed.

- Most of the time, people don't setup a dialin number, so I can't use my phone

- There's no way to display both the attendees list and the chat at the same time

Those are two examples of things that just cause it to be an "also ran" in my mind. It's just missing a lot of the "nice to have" features; much the way Zoom did when it was first release... it feels incomplete and unpolished.

There's another one that I forget the name of that used to have the mute and hang up buttons right next to each other. I would constantly drop off calls because of it. Video and sound quality are important, but so is UX.

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This is completely personal preference and I would never enforce it, but I hate when people dial in to a video conference or other meeting. Even when the camera is off, having 10 people on a call but 15 attendees that include a bunch of random phone numbers, combined with not having any idea who is speaking if you don't know everyone's voice by heart, makes it a very suboptimal experience.

If everyone had a nice camera, nice microphone, and nice headphones (I think all three of these should be provided by employers to remote workers), and just used the video conferencing software the way it was designed, a lot of the friction and annoyances would go away.

I had already built a nice audio setup pre-pandemic because I play games with friends every other evening for the most part.

4K webcam (Logitech BRIO), Blue Yeti for the microphone + a pop filter and a shock mount, and my noise cancelling headphones. All together they cost a fraction of what my work laptop does.

No one complains about my audio. Except when teams decides to randomly switch back to the built-in laptop mic which is hideous as it's right next to the cooling fans...

I have the BRIO's predecessor, the 920 (which I think is still sold). For my purposes, it's good enough and is super easy to use. I experimented for a while using my Canon EOS but it's just so much more of a hassle that it really isn't worth it. (In part this is because it's an older model that doesn't have continuous autofocus.)

I have a 920, if I ever take a job where video-on meetings are the norm I expect to upgrade to a BRIO. It seems really nice I just don't have a use for it right now.

We do generally have video-on meetings and I also record videos using it (at least in part). I'd probably buy a BRIO if I didn't have an external webcam but, honestly, I'd probably be overoptimizing given that something like my network is more likely to get in the way.

I'm very happy with the Logitech StreamCam. 4K (Brio) is a waste since no video conference software supports that resolution.

Teams insists on defaulting to my webcam's built-in microphone even though everything else (including system settings) uses the correct mic. Only seems to be a teams issue, no idea what it is.

I just hate using the camera for conferences. Zoom can highlight the profile of the speaker, so you don't have to recognize people's voice.

People calling in from a phone is a separate issue.

The way Zoom is setup, you dialin and put in your personal attendee code. You still use the computer for video. From a UI perspective, it's no different from using the computer to connect to audio.

From a personal perspective, I prefer the phone for sound quality. I have poor hearing, especially when it comes to understanding speech. As such, I make sure to own a high quality phone with an excellent speaker-phone. The sound on the computer just doesn't compete, and it makes my experience a lot more difficult.

Really handy to dial in when you can (long drive on a Friday afternoon) so you don't break the bank on your mobile data. Unlimited free talk minutes... woo!

Oddly, various VC tools I've used with dial in properly map the caller unique pin code to the calling user.

Maybe I'm a different use case, but I would never use phone over the computer audio on zoom if I can help it. The phone call codec is so bad compared to modern codecs that I couldn't imagine preferring it. The only situation is if I'm on the road in an area that has really terrible mobile service but for some reason has better phone service.

In any case, I know that Google meets at least supports dialing in using phone.

I actually use phone for Zoom audio pretty regularly because it has lower latency and higher reliability than computer audio. I recognize that the audio quality is lower, but I'd rather have fewer interruptions and lower latency than nicer quality that is delayed and interrupted. I simultaneously join video via computer, of course.

FWIW, I live in the heart of Silicon Valley, but there's only one ISP available so it's perhaps unsurprising that service isn't stellar.

Second this. The Teams application rarely works on my vanilla setup (MBP, latest OS). And every time you run it, it reinserts itself into your Login Items — even if you've previously removed it.

This is malware behavior, plain and simple.

WebEx used to do this and thankfully stopped. I would never quit WebEx. I'd just press Cmd-Opt-Esc to bring up the list of running processes and force quit it to avoid it both reinserting itself into my login items and also to prevent it from running the WebEx listener app. Like dude, I'm quitting this app. Why do you think I want to run the app again? WTF? Like I say, they've stopped doing that, but wow, what a shitty thing to have done in the first place.

MS Teams is well integrated within the Microsoft Windows desktop environment, which is what is used by most enterprises. I appreciate that it is integrated into my outlook and onedrive and co-authoring documents is easy in a meeting.

From IT departments' point of view, buying MS Teams license is a no-brainer.

edit: typo

> Pretending that the current system is as good as it can get the for the vast majority of individuals is disingenuous

That is a long standing issue in many companies; the people who buy the software aren't the people that use the software. Which results in the people that use the software being unhappy with what winds up being an inferior product for their use case.

Dial in numbers are an additional $4/month cost for Teams - it's not that the person didn't include it, company likely didn't pay for it.

Teams has good features. Lots of good features. Too many good features, really. And they're assembled in the most confusing/annoying/exhausting way.

I've given it a fair shake (probably in the hundreds of hours of video conferencing) and I still feel like I don't understand how I'm supposed to use it for anything but pure video conferencing.

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