I actually found remote whiteboards to work quite well when used with a proper pen tablet (like a Wacom Intous). Downside of that is of course increased cost, as equipping everyone with one of those isn't that cheap. It also takes some time to get used to using those, but for permanent remote situations this is about as close as you will get to in-person whiteboards.
A less sophisticated variant that works well for a lot of cases is draw.io (personal preference; other diagramming tools might work just as well). It doesn't give you real-time collaboration of the same board and also no freeform drawing, but a lot of the things you want to articulate in meetings are diagrams anyway. Whenever you want to articulate an idea, you just open the page, and screenshare that.
It sometimes feels like we're very hung up on our traditional tools. Pick a remote whiteboard tool, give everyone relevant a big tablet (personally, I find something like an iPad is more intuitive than the Wacoms other than the Cintiq), norm using it (along with other collaborative docs), and you're probably in pretty good shape. Not really expensive compared to all the other costs you have.
> It sometimes feels like we're very hung up on our traditional tools.
We absolutely are. I think I spent over a decade hoping for an extremely-low-latency pen-based note taking solution to show up to replace my use of pen and hardcover notebooks. If anything, I was romanticizing the notion of replacing a simple, inexpensive tool with expensive technology.
We're pretty close to that now with the iPad Pros, but since I've been remote for several years now, I've given up on that idea of a stylus based tablet solution altogether. These days, my preference is to use a live-conversion Markdown editor. If I was still in the Apple ecosystem, I guess I'd pay for a Bear subscription, but I'm on Windows, so I've made do with Dropbox Paper (I didn't expect to like it, but it's been surprisingly good for my use case).
I sometimes use my iPad Pro with Pencil for note taking and it works well. One advantage is that I can record and just write down key points; I can go to that point in the recording if I want what was literally said.
That said, I usually take typed notes (and maybe shoot a few photos with my phone). I can type faster and more legibly than I write and it's easier to turn these notes into a report/article/etc. (Of course, I can always record the whole thing too if I want.)
Bear looks interesting. I haven't looked at my options for a while.
For line drawing, tablets seemed weird for my brain. I'd rotate the tablet to draw comfortably, but a straight line is different because my monitor didn't rotate. But if you look online, people clearly get used to things like this with enough practice.
Cintiqs, iPads, and other tablets don't require this adaptation, though. I've also been kind of amazed how well people can write using mice when forced to (from watching MOOC classes).
>Downside of that is of course increased cost, as equipping everyone with one of those isn't that cheap
I bought a Huion drawing tablet (H610) which was relatively cheap and works well enough for most cases. No screen on the tablet itself, but you quickly get used to drawing while looking at the screen (there is a sort of halo surrounding where the pointer should be, so you're not using it blind). I can see it working quite nicely for whiteboarding.
A less sophisticated variant that works well for a lot of cases is draw.io (personal preference; other diagramming tools might work just as well). It doesn't give you real-time collaboration of the same board and also no freeform drawing, but a lot of the things you want to articulate in meetings are diagrams anyway. Whenever you want to articulate an idea, you just open the page, and screenshare that.