Skype Alternatives ?
Posted: May 12th, '11, 09:55
Lately I was looking for a Skype replacement, something that can handle higher resolutions than 640x480 (from all I know this is what Skype is using).
Thing is, that I bought a very good high resolution webcam (1920 x 1080) and is such a waste to use it at a low resolution.
At first I thought about Ekiga (I still do) because it can do 704x576, but is kinda limited in other options.
I heard then the news, about Skype being bought by the devil, but I 'm not (very) worried though, I think that Skype is here to stay for a while.
Still, this is a good reason to search for something else, maybe not as good as Skype but somewhere near.
Found about 6 of them or so, but I'll have to try them first.
(My features wish list could be different than yours though)
So I started with Brosix. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brosix
I will start with the bad things, two of them:
1 Low video resolution (this hurts me the most),
2 Low sound resolution and an annoying echo.
You might think/say that the connection was to blame for the low res video, but Skype was doing pretty good using the very same connection. I have no idea what it can be done to increase it, and there is no forum or something similar to ask about it.
The sound is....acceptable but you can't get rid of the echo. There is a echo cancellation setting, but it seems that it doesn't working, all you can do is use a headset.
These two things are annoying enough to repel anyone but I still hope that something can be done, because the rest is great.
First of all, is cross platform: Windows/Mac/Linux, then is free and very easy to set up, is looking good (has several nice themes) and it has some great features.
Other than what Skype has, I found three features very handy:
1 - "Co-Browse – You and your party can browse web sites together by sharing the same view of the screen. No more links or URL exchange is needed. "
2 - "Whiteboard – Draw your ideas easier than ever before. Brosix provides a good set of different painting tools, color pallets, text captions, and pointers that will help you visualize your ideas."
(this one means that you can both use the same drawing board at the same time and cooperate)
3 - "Screen Sharing – Work remotely on another user’s computer."
I'm pretty excited by the last one, from here (Romania) I was able to control my girlfriend's laptop (also running Linux) in Germany and the other way around...this is something very useful for us. (Yes of course, this involves getting the permission from the other user, and is kinda sloooow).
For an extensive list see:
http://www.brosix.com/features/
The installation is simple (just extract the archive somewhere) but it had a problem at start with a missing library "libtiff.so.4".
I found no such library in the repos (only libtiff.so.3) so I used that one by renaming it to libtiff.so.4 and placing it in Brosix's libs folder.
Anyway, for my needs I was about to call it a perfect replacement, if it wasn't for that low res video issue.
Thing is, that I bought a very good high resolution webcam (1920 x 1080) and is such a waste to use it at a low resolution.
At first I thought about Ekiga (I still do) because it can do 704x576, but is kinda limited in other options.
I heard then the news, about Skype being bought by the devil, but I 'm not (very) worried though, I think that Skype is here to stay for a while.
Still, this is a good reason to search for something else, maybe not as good as Skype but somewhere near.
Found about 6 of them or so, but I'll have to try them first.
(My features wish list could be different than yours though)
So I started with Brosix. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brosix
I will start with the bad things, two of them:
1 Low video resolution (this hurts me the most),
2 Low sound resolution and an annoying echo.
You might think/say that the connection was to blame for the low res video, but Skype was doing pretty good using the very same connection. I have no idea what it can be done to increase it, and there is no forum or something similar to ask about it.
The sound is....acceptable but you can't get rid of the echo. There is a echo cancellation setting, but it seems that it doesn't working, all you can do is use a headset.
These two things are annoying enough to repel anyone but I still hope that something can be done, because the rest is great.
First of all, is cross platform: Windows/Mac/Linux, then is free and very easy to set up, is looking good (has several nice themes) and it has some great features.
Other than what Skype has, I found three features very handy:
1 - "Co-Browse – You and your party can browse web sites together by sharing the same view of the screen. No more links or URL exchange is needed. "
2 - "Whiteboard – Draw your ideas easier than ever before. Brosix provides a good set of different painting tools, color pallets, text captions, and pointers that will help you visualize your ideas."
(this one means that you can both use the same drawing board at the same time and cooperate)
3 - "Screen Sharing – Work remotely on another user’s computer."
I'm pretty excited by the last one, from here (Romania) I was able to control my girlfriend's laptop (also running Linux) in Germany and the other way around...this is something very useful for us. (Yes of course, this involves getting the permission from the other user, and is kinda sloooow).
For an extensive list see:
http://www.brosix.com/features/
The installation is simple (just extract the archive somewhere) but it had a problem at start with a missing library "libtiff.so.4".
I found no such library in the repos (only libtiff.so.3) so I used that one by renaming it to libtiff.so.4 and placing it in Brosix's libs folder.
Anyway, for my needs I was about to call it a perfect replacement, if it wasn't for that low res video issue.