This is exactly what my group went through. The text channels were nice, but the real killer feature for us was the seamless voice channels. In Skype you had to be very careful to not call the whole group, you had to manually construct voice chats every time. Being able to see who's on and who's hanging out in a voice channel is huge. Wanna play games or just have a chat but nobody else is on right now? Just drop into a voice channel and people can see that you're there so they can jump in without having to pee-arrange anything. Another live saver has been the ability to control, on your side, how you hear other people. Friend has a new mic that's too loud / quiet? You can adjust their volume. Somebody being inconsiderate / distracting? Mute them, or turn their volume down super low.
The general stability was also just fantastic compared to Skype. I used some Skype last year as part of a teaching role and good grief was it torture in comparison. Constant dropping, terrible quality, and painful to arrange.
The general stability was also just fantastic compared to Skype. I used some Skype last year as part of a teaching role and good grief was it torture in comparison. Constant dropping, terrible quality, and painful to arrange.