Zoom - the new Skype

[Donnywolf]

Been looking at the number of peope using this on Telly
Anyone on here using it pls -  I see its free for 40 minutes at a time and then you can just start up again but is it easy ?
Any advice - any tips - any pitfalls
Cheers DW

[SydneyRover]

I have had a couple zoom meetings Wolf the host provided a link and a password and a time. Clicked on the link and opened a window. The were a few things that are quite easy to deal with, agreeing to use your sound and vid camera and some options to click on so you can be seen and you can see them. We had about 6-8 people and when we had all settled down the person speaking auto shows as a large window and others small ones down the rhs.

It was quite straight forward and quality pretty good.

[Not Now Kato]

I use it weekly to keep in touch with friends over on Merseyside. 6 of us in total and it works very well indeed, far better than Skype.  We schedule 2 successive 40 minute sessions in advance and transition between them is easy,  We use the app as opposed to the browser version, lots of options.  Highly recommended, though how long they'll keep it free is anyone's guess as it's become very popular indeed.

[Donnywolf]

Thanks thats sounding ok so far

Wouldnt want a live VSC Zoom though would we ?

[bahrain rover]

There is two in particular I would pay to see in a zoom meeting Wolfie

[ian1980]

We use it quite a lot for various things. Work, junior football, social etc

It works really well and is quite easy to use. The main mistakes people make are quite easily sorted, usually it’s not enabling the sound / video but once you start using it, it becomes second nature.

You also just have to bear in mind it’s not like a physical group meeting, where a number of people can easily talk at once. If you get too many people talking at the same time it doesn’t know which feed to broadcast so it can become a bit distorted but again the more you use it the better it gets as people realise to slow down and wait for a point to speak.

The host can also mute everyone on/off which is particularly useful when we’ve done our junior football quiz’s to stop all the young lads talking over each other and ensuring the person doing the quiz is heard clearly.

You can also share your screen with everyone in the meeting so if you have photos or documents etc and you share screen, everyone in the meeting can see it.

Really easy to set up a meeting. A host will go onto Zoom and set a meeting date and time. This creates a link, meeting ID and password. You can send the link to whoever you want to be part of the meeting and when they follow the link and enter the meeting ID and password to join the meeting. The host will be notified when someone wants to join the meeting and they’ll get a pop up to let them in.

[Donnywolf]

Thanks again for the advice all

I will try it later and report back 

[silent majority]

In recent weeks I've used Skype, Microsoft Teams, Go to Meeting and Zoom.

The company advice has been not to use Zoom because of security concerns. I've used it on my personal PC and it seem to work OK. Microsoft Teams is an excellent bit of kit when you can get your head around some of its features and integrates with other solutions incredibly well.