• phillygal
    +5

    Several of us have tested Hello. Right now it's buggy but shows great promise. We've only tested it with 2 participants but hope to give it a try with 3 of us at the same time sometime soon. They seem to be shooting for the most user friendly app and I am looking forward to seeing progress. Right now it is a very basic program...no whistles and bells. Once the bugs are ironed out they could be successful just for that alone. Not everyone needs screen sharing and text chat and would, therefore be happy just to make and participate in an easy uncomplicated video call. My fingers are crossed that they have screen sharing in their development plan. Thanks for posting, SJVN, and thanks to Gozzin for passing the info along and testing. Just one more thought...we're all Linux users and are genuinely looking forward to Hello's continued refinement.

    • drunkenninja
      +2

      What would you say is currently the biggest annoyance factor of the app? You mentioned it was buggy, can you elaborate on how bad the bugs are?

      • phillygal
        +3

        TBH, I am not the best tester in the world but I will try to describe a bit of what I experienced.

        Connecting. The first time I used it, I had repeated "call failed" responses but after several attempts, I was able to connect with the caller. The next round of testing on another occasion was smooth as silk connecting. Until the big freeze. Connecting went downhill after that.

        Freezing. Hello wil eventuallyl freeze. Trying to establish a new connection may or may not work. I will say that anytime it did freeze, it was after a lengthy bit of time. While it worked, it was enjoyable.

        Interface. This may or may not be a bug but the interface is inconsistent. Sometimes you have a pop-out screen, sometimes you remain in a tab of the browser. Through repeated tests, it appears consistent in this sense: If you are the caller (the one who sent the link to the person you wish to talk with), you will get the pop-out when your friend responds to your link. If you are the one who responds to the link (the one being called), you will remain on a web page. I personally prefer the pop-out and would like the option to be able to pop-out if I am the one on the web page end of the call.

        The pop-out is easy to resize and move about as you would expect it to be. You can also resize the browser if you are stuck using the web site but that, again as you would expect, is a clunkier solution. If you are not the type to be multitasking during a call, you will probably not be troubled by this.

        I don't know if the difficulty connecting is due to new user error (possibly) or if it's a bug. I feel it is a bug because all three of us had issues with it.

        Just a reminder that all calls were one on one. With different time zones and the holidays, we haven't had the opportunity to test how a three-way call would work out.

        Bottom line is, it is worth taking a look at. It's already better than some others I've tried and it has no where to go but up :)

        Does that help?

        • drunkenninja
          +1

          This helps a ton, thank you for such a detailed summary! As for the app itself it's definitely something I would like to try, but from what you say it might be in my best interest to wait a couple more months for some of the major kinks to be worked out before I pester a few friends into getting it.

          • Gozzin (edited 9 years ago)
            +3

            Yup,she summed it up really well. I don't get why the call would fail over and over. It also crashed Fire Fox,but not my Linux OS.whew! We finally gave up on it and went back into the Google Hangout.

            You can attach the talk icon to your Fire Fox window,which generates a random url for your callee(s) when you click on it. This makes accessing Hello easy as pie. I definitely see this as having a lot of potential and I'm going to keep testing it now and again and enjoying it as it develops.