[91bananas]

If you're ok with the Google machine and spending way too much money on a computer that does basically nothing, there are these from Google[0] which have been great for me and my team.

We have a Hangout open all day in the office, displayed on a 60" TV. Anyone that's working remote can jump in whenever and it's somewhat like they're in the office. Audio is my only complaint. Sometimes it is difficult to be heard

[0]: https://chromebusinessdevices.withgoogle.com/products/1677/h...

[fsavard]

That's interesting. Are you aware of other teams using video chat like this, ie. all day long?

Do you know what the Google monthly fees are? Is the bandwidth consumed a concern?

[91bananas]

Yeah, hangouts itself is a completely free service. I am not familiar with too many others doing this.

I've heard a couple other stories like ours. One I remember specifically was a company with a 50/50 mix, they did ALL meetings from their own desks on a hangout so that everyone had the same presence, the remote people didn't feel left out, because everyone has to fight for the same one audio track.

As for bandwidth, it hasn't been anything that we've been troubled by. Been using it for nearly 2 years now. The client on the remote machines has some hiccups from time to time and is somewhat of a resource hog. But if you keep it in the background it isn't too bad.

[wapz]

If they're using Hangouts I presume it's free. I've used Hangouts while partially-remote (very small scale) and we just used regular google accounts.