Warning: Microsoft Teams Free (classic) will be gone in 2 months Microsoft will officially kill its legacy free Teams app for business, Teams Free (classic), on April 12, with all chats, files and other data lost unless you switch to a paid version. News of the premium push on Microsoft's productivity app was covered by The Reg in January, but we're told some sysadmins on the free plan are …
Who cares if the free version of Teams goes away? I, like most people, use Teams on my work PC because my employer uses Office as the company "Low Productivity Software" suite. In my personal life, my need for virtual meetings is several times per week from the non-profits I volunteer for, Church & family, and that's exclusively the free version of Zoom, which at this point, is much less problematic than Teams. The basic stuff Teams is lacking makes one wonder if Zoom is what they use internally at Microsoft. (e.g. Ability to test & adjust the microphone & speakers locally w/o making "a call".) In the last three years, there have been exactly two times a virtual meeting for something personal used Teams.
What's been interesting to watch is how many of the vendors my company uses, many of which are companies that dwarf the one I work for, have moved off Teams over the last year or so. So to "meet" with them when they set up a meeting, we have to put stuff like Zoom & Webex (aurgh!) on our company PC's anyway.
I use Microsoft at work. At home, I have Linux and Open Source solutions to cover most of my personal needs. On retirement, MS will never see anything from me again.
The last bastion of Microsoft is gaming. As soon as I can game on Linux, they will be given the last boot. Not installing Win11, Win10 is my last MS OS, come what may.
Instead of clicking the profile picture you have to click the three dots next to the profile picture. Perhaps we shouldn't blame the article as MS also get the help for their own software wrong and El Reg are hopefully using something better.
“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly how the Teams UI works and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
I love the way the windows seamlessly blend into each other in that edgeless way so you can't see which you're on; joining a meeting with a window too small to display the join button; the Fisher price UI. Notifications that don't go away until you needlessly click on the correct window (see above) are a mere courtesy detail.
</sarcasm>
"And I absolutely love how you can't choose how to put line breaks vs. send the message in chat (shift-enter vs. plain enter vs. ctrl-enter)."
Yes, it sucks big time. Nowadays, since I'm not a one liner at all, I always switch the GUI to format-mode (bold, etc ...) so as ENTER issues a new line as ... it always was since the mid-50s, I think !
One day, they will even remove the SPACE in teams, then ponctuation, then the consonants ...
tllfckngsckthstm (it will fucking suck, this time !)
Just use https://meet.jit.si/ - it is free and you do not need to (pretend to) read a complicated license.
You don't even need to install specialised software - a web browser supporting WebRTC is enough. That's Chrome/Chromium and other derivatives, Firefox, and Safari works quite well too.
There's also an iOS app that does WebRTC if I recall correctly, but I found it laggy compered to simply using Safari, and I prefer to keep my app count low if I can (I usually fail spectacularly in that aim and need to cull every so often :) ).
We run it inhouse, though, as the server is the point where you can see all the streams. It's not exactly hard to set up, they've done a sterling job
… didn't you read the terms and conditions? What do you mean your legal department is a lad called Colin who knows "a bit about theses things"?
The invoice for this advice will be included in your next subscription payment.
Let's hope the usual thing happens and people jump ship to another service and knock holes in the "network effect".
Never pay the ransomware to get your data back,
GDPR - right to data portability ?
Generally speaking the data should be free
(https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/right-to-data-portability/#:~:text=In%20most%20cases%20you%20cannot,is%20manifestly%20unfounded%20or%20excessive.)
Yes, I've been using computers for the best part of 40 years. I think it is no longer acceptable to expect the end user to find the bugs. That world ended when they opted for the subscription model and the drip drip of constant updates. Same for Adobe, get it right, or get out.
You could migrate to Google. But they will get bored, close it down and try something else until that gets boring.
If you import into Apple, it will be incompatible with anything else, except other Apple sucks
You could got Open Source. It will be rock solid, but the will GUI suck and you best that Dave doesn't get pissed off with all the whining end users and big corporations constantly finding obscure issues, none of whom contribute a dammed thing to help out.
I somehow ended up with two different Teams accounts associated with the same email address. One was the Free Teams business, now known as Teams Classic, and the other was Teams Personal, now known as Teams Free. On Windows 11 I have to use different apps to access them. On Mac OS, I can switch between them on the same login.
This was on an account originally set up with Office Live back in the day.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
