We recently hired our first remote employee and we've been experimenting with telepresence. Our conclusion is that it's slightly flaky but certainly ready for p

We recently hired our first remote employee and we've been experimenting with telepresence. Our conclusion is that it's slightly flaky but certainly ready for prime-time for a technically-oriented company like us. On our connection the picture quality isn't great (640x480), but good enough that it seems like the person is in the room. The audio is more important than video and it syncs perfectly with the person's lips moving which is extremely important. (That was the major problem when we tried it 3 years ago.) There are two services that we use: Vidyo is a pay-for service where you can either purchase a $7000 video conference router and use it as much as you want. Or go to a third party provider and pay ~3c/minute. But for 1-on-1 calls we use Skype--the quality is the same and it's free. One of the keys to having a good experience is to buy a good speakerphone. We use the USB Phoenix Duet (~$130). If you rely on the camera's phone it greatly detracts from the experience. http://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Audio-Mt202-Duet-Speakerpho/ http://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Audio-Mt202-Duet-Speakerpho/ The camera doesn't seem that important to the experience but we like Microsoft's LifeCam: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-H5D-00001-LifeCam-Cinema/ http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-H5D-00001-LifeCam-Cinema/