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I'm not suggesting it's great, but just to spur discussion: Does Google Hangouts solve this problem for you? If not, what would you change about it?

I don't love it, but I work on a distributed team and we use it every day for standups.

I recommend Appear.in http://appear.in

I second appear.in

Several times now I've been in a group chat where someone's audio or video isn't working so we go to appear.in and everything works perfectly

I'm writing what could potentially be a competitor to appear.in and I also recommend them :P .

They're definitely the cream of the WebRTC crop right now.

I wonder if TeamTalk (http://bearware.dk/) would meet your needs. The desktop front-end is relatively light as these things go, and isn't browser-based.