Skype fix is in!

Except that it isn't.

To revisit this issue again: The otherwise excellent Skype service really lets itself down in its public support forums. Starting around January 20th, their boards were abuzz with problems surrounding Skype 5.0's Facebook integration feature. A server setting they instituted around then caused some very irritating behavior for Skype users in some corporate networks.

After helping dozens of people at Crash Central to turn off the rain of cascading error messages, I mentioned it to an editor at PC World who asked me to write it up for the PC World BizFeed site.

I did, and within hours, Skype claimed to have fixed the problem.

Here's what Raul said on the Skype support site:

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This error has been fixed by us.

You do not need to upgrade your Skype for it, we did the fix on our infrastructure side.

Thank you for raising it here.
==========

...and here's what I say in response: How come nothing's changed, then?

Before getting ready to tell the 100-plus people I support that they can now turn Skype's Facebook integration back on if they like, I tried it out myself. The windows continue to cascade when content filters block Facebook. The CPU usage jumped to maximum. Everything slowed down. In short, things are no different from how they were a month ago.

I'd love to say what Skype wants me to say--that it's all cool, guys, just go ahead as usual--but I can't. That's because I'm the guy they come to when things don't work. And guess what? They still don't work.

Ball's back in your court, Skype. Show them you're as brilliant as I know you can be.

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