back to article Microsoft Teams goes free, as free as the wind blows... up to a point

On the eve of its 2018 partner conference, Inspire, Microsoft has launched a freebie version of its Slack-alike collaboration platform, Teams. While Redmond has put a brave face on things, claiming 200,000 businesses over 181 markets are happily collaborating in the shiny new Teams world, Slack merely applies some oil to its …

  1. Not Enough Coffee

    I guess we can see how out of touch we are by how many of the apps we know. My count is 7.

    https://products.office.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/apps

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Windows

      My count is less than that and I follow Hacker News FFS!

      I see they have Papr but not Plopr or Wnkr

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Do you know who is top of the hit parade?

  2. JohnFen

    Free is too expensive

    I wouldn't use Teams even if Microsoft straight-up paid me to.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Stop

      Re: Free is too expensive

      Neither would I for one, oh so basic, reason. I've been using Microsoft products since MS-DoS came to market. Only as required for the job. Having seen them in action, they behave just like a drug dealer, people who I've also been cleaning up we to as well. Their behavior hasn't changed one iota. Free? How long before the decide to change the terms of use, a right reserved in their EULA's.

    2. a_yank_lurker

      Re: Free is too expensive

      I will only use something like that a work because that is the tool they are requiring me to use. Otherwise, the only way I will use Slurps free products is if they are released under GPL v3, i.e. never.

      1. JohnFen

        Re: Free is too expensive

        Yes, I was talking about my own use. At work, I use whatever my employer requires -- it's my employer's machines, time, and money, after all, so they get to call those shots.

  3. ScissorHands
    Mushroom

    Why do sheeple abandon their freedom?

    Slack, now Teams, before AIM and ICQ, when IRC is perfectly reasonable, open, and free

    Whatsapp and FB Messenger and Apple Messages when XMPP is perfectly reasonable, open, and free.

    Tech people really like to enslave themselves - but hey, Google and Facebook make tons of money, so I guess that's OK

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why do sheeple abandon their freedom?

      Recall Slack, HIpchat, Facebook Messenger, FlowDock and others used to have XMPP integrations (and some had IRC as well). Of course those hooks still required accounts to connect to, so turning those off only hampered interoperability with multichat clients like Adium/Pidgin. Remember those? And now today, I have HipChat (for home office), Slack or Skype (for various clients), and Signal (for friends) open all the time. It's idiocy.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why do sheeple abandon their freedom?

      Can XMPP be made to be secure and encrypted to the same extent as the Signal protocol, for example? That’s the big question. Unencrypted communications just aren’t good enough nowadays.

  4. deadlockvictim

    If it worked and was easy to use...

    If it worked and was easy to use, I would use it.

    Skype worked and I used it until it was deformed.

    FaceTime works, and I use it, whenever I can snatch my wife's iPhone.

    When I tried to use Microsoft Teams to contact a client in Spain, myself and the young fellow from the sysadmins gave up after half an hour and I rang her instead.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Goodbye BOFHs!

    BOFHs hate Teams, nothing to install on one of their oh so precious servers and it'll work on ports 80/443 so it'll sail through firewalls and deliver video and voice conferencing to desktop and mobiles. It's even replacing WhatsApp in my organisation.

    1. KjetilS

      Re: Goodbye BOFHs!

      Is that organisation Microsoft?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "unlimited and searchable message history"

    They had to store it and make it searchable for the NSA anyway, so may as well turn it into a feature.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Free?

    Free? You can eat for free if you eat your own turds.

    And pretty much MS Teams is like eating turds.

    The only reason why my employer uses it is that it was bundled into O365 and the bean counters thought it was "just as good" as Slack.... and cancelled our Slack subscription.

    We've just stopped trying to collaborate now and gone back to emails.

  8. Dr Stephen Jones

    "We've just stopped trying to collaborate now and gone back to emails."

    Isn't email collaboration too? Perhaps the employer realised Slack was mainly being used for goofing around.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    But can you....

    initiate a screen share session from an IM conversation or do you have to make a video call to get screen sharing functionality?

    Waiting for this since 2016 MS!!!

    https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/16936774-enable-screen-sharing-without-video-call

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Another #metoo, courtesy Microsoft

    Where others lead, Microsoft follows, now, where's that cliff.

  11. DenonDJ DN-2500F

    We moved from the annoyingly named and feature weak "Skype for Business" (used to be Lync) to Teams as soon as it was available to download ( I used to work for a software company and they loved new toys) .

    The next company I used it for had beefed up the OOB security ( they were a multi-office cyber security company after all) but used it for everything ( comms, file sharing, etc as it fitted the bill perfectly.

    Now using it at the NHS.

    I'm sure there are bits that are better in other products (screen sharing in Zoom for example - i only want to share a small part of one app's window , I cant see how thats done) and why when i click on a meeting does it open a browser page prompting me to open the app. FFS.

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