Spoke Too Soon

[kevin_standlee]

Did I say it took 90 minutes to get Skype running on Lisa's computer? Let's make that more like 120 minutes. The version we installed that was supposed to make it stop asking for an update that it would then refuse to install did that, and after a reboot the computer's sound came back. However, Lisa discovered that it also wouldn't work for voice communication, which is of course the main point of having the program! More uninstall/reinstalls and we got a version running that (a) works as a voice communications program and (b) doesn't disable all of the other sounds on the computer. Unfortunately, it continues to ask you to update it every time it starts, and saying yes is pointless because it refuses to actually do the download. But otherwise, the program works.

Comments

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

If Lisa is wondering why I'm not on Skype, upgrades are the reason. A week or so back Skype announced that the version I had was too old, it could not connect as it was, and I'd have to update my Skype version whether I liked it or not. So I allowed it to download and install the latest version of Skype. Now it will not log in at all or give me an explanation why. (It does love sitting there eating many CPU cycles and not responding. Since Skype shouldn't be running chaotic fluid turbulence simulations it's anyone's guess what it's actually doing with all that processing power; it's certainly not using it for communications.) Eventually I'll get a round tuit and see if I can get it working, but for the moment Skype has broken itself.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Lisa says that if necessary, you can leave her a message on Second Life

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

She left me a message on SL! I'm not sure how often she's on, but that's a good fallback route. I also have a Skype app on my tablet, if I ever remember that when I'm near a wifi hotspot.

[msconduct.livejournal.com]

I only moved onto Windows 7 from XP last year, and before I did so I was finding some Microsoft software was behaving unpredictably (which was one of the reasons I made the move). Given that XP is now three iterations back from their current OS it's not really surprising that there isn't full backwards compatibility. They still do a lot better than Apple who by my observations don't appear to even try in this area.