Welcome to the new normal 🤪

The coronavirus has forced us to re-think and adapt our habits in practically every area of life. One of the most profound changes is not being able to go to work—that daily commute and 8-hour stint that many of us would have considered as inevitable as taxes.

If you’ve suddenly found yourself working from home, adjusting to the independence and lack of structure may be tricky enough without the added technological challenges. Migrating from your professional office setup to the couch-laptop workstation you share with your cat (who seems infuriatingly oblivious to the sketchy internet connection!!) can be a trying task, especially when you have to teach yourself about things like cloud storage and screen sharing.

Mastering videoconferencing is a great start—if nothing else, so you can call your kids and ask them to walk you through things like ‘cloud storage’ and ‘screen sharing’. So we’re here to set you on course, with four great web conferencing tools to try. And if the mere mention of ‘web conferencing’ makes your brain want to roll over and play dead, don’t worry: we’ve included ‘Skype’ on there… You’ve definitely heard of Skype.

Zoom Meetings

This user-friendly desktop app is available free of charge for short meetings—or longer ones, if you don’t mind restarting your conference call after 40mins. If you want longer, uninterrupted chin-wags, the pay-wall isn’t terribly high. It should be noted, however, that Zoom isn’t the most secure video-conferencing software out there, so consider looking further afield if you work for MI6.

Skype

If Skype was the only videoconferencing software you’d heard of pre-coronavirus, join the club. Not surprisingly, one of the best things that Skype has going for it is the fact that practically everyone knows how to use it, and has already downloaded the app on their laptop and/or mobile. But by the same token, we’ve all experienced the old sound/image delay, so while Skype is a great choice for an impromptu meeting, it might be worth experimenting with other options if your team wants to meet more regularly.

Google Meet

Thanks to its handy email integration, Google’s competitively priced video-conferencing tool is super convenient for businesses that already use Gsuite. Powered by the cloud, this conferencing software’s familiar interface is easy to use and offers different screen settings to enable collaboration. So if you’re an existing Gsuite user, then Google Meet is a no-brainer. If you don’t, you can still join meetings started by others, but you won’t be able to host your own pow-wow 😭

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GoToMeeting

If you and your work pals are more comfortable with your phones than your laptops, you might like a more mobile-friendly solution. GoToMeeting is a conferencing option hosted by LogMeIn, with both personal and business options available. You can start a meeting straight from your phone, switch from audio to video, and easily share your screen with your colleagues. Send new invites with a tap of your screen, and if the quality starts to go, you can switch between options to maximize the image quality. One downside of GoToMeeting is that there is no free option, but if you’ve decided to go with a paid service, this is a fantastic, flexible web conferencing solution.

If you’re new to working from home—or you just want a more real-life experience when you phone your loved ones—finding the right technology is half the battle won. This list of handy tools will get you started.

A note to tech nerds: we’ve heard tell of futuristic technologies with names like Cyber-something-or-other that beam life-sized images of your boss into the room, but really, who wants that? 😱 We’ve gone with reliable picks that (besides keeping your work-life at a safe, pixelated distance) are apps that everyone’s heard of, and are either free to use or don’t cost the world!