Categories
General blog entries

Why I don’t like Ventrilo

Recently I installed Ventrillo because some red necks decided we needed a voice server for EVE Online and the in-game stuff won’t cut it. Ventrillo advertises with ‘advanced’ features like surround positioning and useless crap like that.

At first glance I’d say the GUI is old-skool, bit too plain and awkward to set up for the first time. It annoys the heck out of me where all panels are placed and how it all comes together.

Perhaps profiles are useful for some but not for me: I need a separate name for all servers I use in voice chats so profiles separate from the server settings is as useful as picking up your hamburger at a different counter from your fries…

Next up is the fact that it won’t minimize into the system tray, leaving me with yet another window to lug around.

Finally it has no Linux client. Seriously. It is in the works (or so the site says) but the do have a linux server, leaving me puzzled why linux is not supported in the first place.

The only cool thing that Ventrillo has (and Teamspeak will get in version 3.0 which is currently beta) is the surround stuff… Which I can’t try because I don’t have a surround setup on this computer…

Ow I long for the days where everyone would just stick to Teamspeak, which is still masterfully better suited for voice chat than all the other programs around…

Categories
Japan Blog Study Tour

Visiting the first companies

Today (3rd day) we have visited 2 companies. Omron and NAIST. Omron makes nanotech electrical components like miniature fiber-optics and face recognition software. Omron has a nice building and they do some cool stuff but they work pretty much on a practical side: they have a problem and they develop a solution.

Like I said before, 2 of the group became sick from last nights food and they became ill while we were on the move: Ronald decorated the floor of the bus and Erik spectacularly demonstrated the acoustics of the Omron building. As we walked outside the open balcony of the Omron building our tour guide (pretty Japanese girl) explained how they worked in an open workspace and people came outside for fresh air or to smoke a cigarette in piece and quiet. She barely had said that when Erik hurled towards the nearest fire escape and demonstrated the echoing of the balcony haven. The look on the poor girls face when she realized what was going on was priceless.