back to article OneDrive Skype integration goes live aaand... OneDrive falls over in Europe

The controversial cloud filesharing functionality trumpeted by Microsoft for its chat platform, Skype, quietly moved from Insider-only to the big time this week, rolling out the day before OneDrive, er, rolled over. Skype Product Manager Steven Abrahams dropped us a line at Vulture Central to talk Skype, platforms and life …

  1. Christopher Rogers

    Never mind onedrive - the whole of Office 365 and Exchange Online this week has been a car crash. It appears MS just want the problem to go away now though, they've even broken the Heath Service inside the portal so i can't see any incidents or advisories....

    Bet Google aren't having this problem....

    1. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

      Re: the Heath Service

      Er... I've heard of cutting back, but I'd rather not have tree surgeons working in the NHS.

  2. Natalie Gritpants Jr

    Powerpointing the other half into submission

    Think if I tried to send my wife a powerpoint when remodelling the kitchen I would be on the receiving end of a hard stare.

    Seriously that's what Plasticine was invented for or Lego if you're if you like modern minimlaism.

    1. Steve K

      Re: Powerpointing the other half into submission

      PowerPoint?! If I don't send her a Visio file then there is hell to pay....

      1. Borg.King

        Re: Powerpointing the other half into submission

        But she can't see the Visio file on her Mac. Better send her a PDF.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Powerpointing the other half into submission

          But she can't see the Visio file on her Mac. Better send her a PDF.

          Lots of free Visio file readers available. Of course, she can retaliate by installing OmniGraffle Pro and then send back Visio files that will make his look pretty primitive :)

  3. Expat-Cat

    I live in Europe and use Onedrive., and in fact have been using it today. No issues seen.

    Ho widespread was the "wobble" supposed to be?

    1. AMBxx Silver badge

      I'm wondering if there are two versions of Office 365. I've never had any problems with Exchange online of OneDrive. I'm using it via MS Action Pack so have an E3 subscription. Not sure if that makes a difference?

    2. macjules

      Very widespread indeed. The MFA failure affected any organisation that had strict authentication enabled such as WPP and all its companies, for example. There have now been a number of very unfortunate incidents to do with Azure or Office 361, not least their having to reboot the North Europe data centre and then more recently the Texas data centre.

  4. Teiwaz

    Anudder MS Fail article

    I'm starting to get suspicious they're doing it intentionally for the publicity.

    On a combination of the Reggie Perrin school of businesss and the 'no publicity is bad publicity' ethos.

  5. Avatar of They
    Coffee/keyboard

    WTF?

    What kind of weird world does he live in where you send your better half powerpoint presentations to talk about a remodel of something. Do they not live in the same house or talk to eachother?

    I like every other male in the world lets my wife make decisions about kitchen remodelling without my input, except a "Great dear!" now and then.

    But privacy for personal users only, business can't get it. Hmmmm me thinks it isn't upto scratch on legislation then. But I am cynical.

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      WTF indeed!

      If I sent She Who Must be Obeyed a PowerPoint instead of a full 3D model, I'd be looking for a new home, not a new kitchen!

      Sketchup, Lego and cardboard might be acceptable formats.

    2. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

      Re: WTF?

      Quite.

      I even have a more advanced process in place: we work on it together on a machine. Much quicker. This tends to happen after we spend some time scribbling on paper, the machine version is more for sharing with any third parties who would consider especially my handwriting as a form of encryption :).

  6. mark l 2 Silver badge

    I hardly see this function as a major improvement to Skype and it is probably something that would be used by less than 1% of Skype users.

    I don't know what the usage stats of Skype are but I bet they are down from the pre-Microsoft owned days. All they have done since they bought it, it fsck around with it, killing off legacy versions which meant that hardware devices like Skype phones no longer worked, changing the UI in every version making it hard to use, and I have found recently that even the quality of the video chat is poor compared to rivals.

    Trying to Skype with my elderly parent and it kept freezing, dropping the calls, bad sound quality. Yet when we switched to Whatsapp video chat it worked flawlessly for the whole chat.

    I wish they had killed Skype in favour of keeping the MSN messenger app, before they stopped developing it, MSN was better than Skype is now.

  7. vtcodger Silver badge

    "As for the shared file itself? It remains sat in OneDrive."

    sat = safe? Or has the English language once again moved beyond me?

    1. Paul Herber Silver badge

      sat = safe = resting

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        re. sat = safe = resting

        more like: pining for the fjords :/

    2. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

      Re: It remains sat in OneDrive

      It remains sat in OneDrive, but is inaccessible on any other day of the week.

  8. Tikimon
    FAIL

    Exactly why software BLOWS and is getting worse!

    "Hey, did we change this because we think it's a better design and that we've proven that"

    What an arrogant, clueless twit! It doesn't matter if your stupid TEAM think it's a better design! It's the USERS who are important! You prove you made it better when the USERS are MORE HAPPY. If you make your users UN-happy, you have made the product WORSE!

    Like Apple, who don't even bother with user testing anymore, they ask other Apple fanbois if they like it. Stupid, stupid, stupid...

  9. Howard Hanek
    Happy

    But Don't Forget!

    ...you MUST use OneDrive once a month or your account will be purged. Microsoft ALWAYS gets the purges right. On THAT they have a perfect record.

    1. WolfFan Silver badge

      Re: But Don't Forget!

      Hmm. I haven’t used my OneDrive account in at least three months, probably closer to four. [checks] Nope, nothing seems to have been ‘purged’. Maybe I’m special.

  10. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Holmes

    Abrahams thinks the external view of the company has changed

    Yup indeed. Microsoft used to be a company that benefited of a minimum of respect concerning its products. Office in general and Excel in particular have been viewed as top-of-the-line and no business these days functions without Excel.

    With all the clueless blundering around Windows 1 0 updates, that respect has now gone down the toilet.

    1. PeterM42
      Facepalm

      Re: Abrahams thinks the external view of the company has changed

      "Abrahams admitted that ...... the new Microsoft likes to shovel software into the hands of users as quickly as possible".....

      Working or not!?

  11. Someone Else Silver badge
    FAIL

    Micros~1

    Can't these fuckers do anything right??!?

    Hint: No....

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    insisted that the gang is listening to users

    listening as in "lalala, I'm listening, lalala...".

    (...)

  13. Someone Else Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Micros~1 -- take 2

    Abrahams admitted that "it sounds very negative" but the new Microsoft likes to shovel softbloatware into the hands of users as quickly as possible before adding too many bells and whistles useful features that may turn out to be unnecessary actually work.

    There, FTFY

    And yes, Mr. Abrahams, it actually does sound VERY negative...'cuz it is.

  14. Smartypantz

    Lan technology FTW

    Host your own databases, mailservers, fileservers, webservers.

    - Cheaper

    - More secure!! Yes its IS!

    - Waaaay faster! when everything is not forced through https/html/json/xml, and services is on a guaranteed high bandwidth LAN

    - Ethically compliant (fairtrade and so on)

    - Freedom of choice maintained

    Subscription based web services as a software substitute is for suckers!!

    1. a_yank_lurker

      Re: Lan technology FTW

      Cloudy solutions really only make sense for a limited range of cases. For most including individuals a local drive with an intelligent backup plan is the best option. Cloud usage would be for convenience; e.g. sharing files and backing up critical files for most. Cloudy vendor goes TITSUP and you are toast if you do not have a local copy of your files and programs.

  15. Borg.King

    Skype should be simple

    Easily editable list of contacts, their current online state, and a button to start a video chat with them.

    Anything else is Skype Pro, which I do not need myself. My iPhone can handle making real telephone calls.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "all the Skype clients run from a single codebase"

    We saw how building it on Electron went - bloated, slow, and lacking features. Moreover, running on your main competitor javascript and html engine.... for the matter, MS could have coded it in Java, and the result wouldn't have been worse...

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