Cisco CEO John Chambers doesn’t just talk a good game about telepresence, the videoconferencing technology that creates the illusion you’re in a room with someone who’s actually thousands of miles away. He’s planning to install his company’s high-end system in his Silicon Valley home, provided he and his wife can agree on a spot for it. “I figured we could convert one of the kids’ old bedrooms,” since they’ve grown up and left the house,” he says. “She told me, ‘You do that and you’ll be sleeping in there.’”

Though he’s not done negotiating the location, one thing that Chambers doesn’t have to worry about is cost. ­As longtime chief at the networking giant, he can surely afford the installation, which can easily run north of $150,000 per room.

But can his customers? Even as Chambers and rivals such as Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500), Polycom (PLCM) and Tandberg tout telepresence as the perfect tech tool to reduce travel costs and boost productivity, observers have their doubts. Sure, telepresence enables meetings on three or more huge screens, in high definition with pristine audio quality. (CSCO) (HPQ) (PLCM) (T)

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Microsoft’s follow-on to Vista, Windows 7, is getting closer to launch. Guess what? The buzz is better than you might expect. (MSFT) (HPQ) (DELL) (AAPL) (INTC) (AMD)

Jon Fortt and Michael Copeland of Fortune weigh in on the latest buzz around Silicon Valley. (AAPL) (GOOG) (MSFT) (YHOO)

On NBC’s Press: Here, I talk with a panel about the latest issue of Fortune, the Fortune 500 list, and changes to the tech landscape. (AAPL) (MSFT) (INTC) (CSCO) (GOOG) (TIVO) (EBAY) (YHOO)

During Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz’s conference call Tuesday to discuss the company’s quarterly results, there was much to discuss: Sales fell 13% and profits sank 78% as advertisers cut back on online spending. And the company confirmed reports of layoffs, saying it would shed about 675 jobs. Yet analysts seemed to care about only one thing: Yahoo’s search business.

The worst-kept secret in the tech world is that Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) and Microsoft have been talking again about a potential deal. So everyone wanted to know if Bartz would sell search. But that was the wrong question. A better one: Why would she?

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Cisco CIO Rebecca Jacoby

Even in these tough economic times, tech giant Cisco offers employees some pretty sweet benefits: Employees can visit on-campus doctors and dietitians, drop off dry cleaning, or get an oil change, and now they can pick the kind of computer they want to use at work.

That’s right - Cisco has started letting workers choose from a handful of laptops, including an Apple MacBook Pro. Only don’t call the program a perquisite. Rebecca Jacoby, Cisco’s (CSCO, Fortune 500) top information technology officer, says the initiative, launched last year, should actually save the company money. The fact that employees involved in the pilot program are deliriously happy with it - Jacoby and her peers even get love notes from satisfied road warriors - is a bonus.

Of course, that new freedom requires companies and employees alike to make sacrifices. Since Cisco began offering a choice of machines last June, roughly a quarter of employees have opted for Macs, yet they are pretty much on their own for tech support. (An in-house online community for Mac users gets a little help from Jacoby’s department.) Cisco, in turn, has to make a slightly higher upfront investment for the workers who want Macs, which are pricier than PCs.

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A departing designer claims data too often trumps art. Image: Google Sketchup logo

On his way out of Google, Douglas Bowman has posted  a blog missive that might haunt the company one day. Bowman, the (now former) visual design lead, accuses the company’s culture of relying too much on numbers, to the point where creativity suffers.

“Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better,” he writes. “I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that.”

On the San Francisco Bay Area’s local NBC station, Jon Fortt and Sarah Lacy talk to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster about controversies surrounding the company. This episode of Press:Here airs on Sunday, 3/22. Part 1 of 4. (EBAY) (YHOO) (GOOG) (MNI) (GCI) (NWS) (MSFT) (AAPL)

Jon Fortt recaps Apple’s preview of the next-generation iPhone OS, due this summer. (AAPL) (RIMM) (T) (PALM) (MOT) (NOK) (MSFT)

Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone 3.0 event is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. PT/ 1 p.m. ET. Refresh this page for updates.

Eager members of the press are filing in. The room is mostly full now. We’ve been asked to silence our phones.

The lights have dimmed. Greg Joswiak, head of iPhone product marketing, has taken the stage. He says we’re getting a preview of iPhone OS 3.0. He’s going to take a few minutes to reminds us where the iPhone is. It’s in 80 countries. They stated the goal to sell 10 million in the first calendar year, and blew that number away, selling 13.7 million. He’s showing a graph that shows sales of 17 million iPhones, and the inflection point when the iPhone 3G came out.

The iPod touch also runs the iPhone OS, and in total, Apple has sold 30 million devices with the OS. (Interesting that the iPhone is outselling the touch.) He says there have been more than 800,000 downloads of the iPhone software development kit, which developers use to make apps. Also, 50,000 developers have joined the iPhone developer program.

Now, kudos from developers for the OS: Gameloft says they have more than 20 games and 2 million paid downloads. Steve Demeter of Trism, a one-man game development shop, is in a video about the game he developed. He developed the popular Trism game, and he’s saying it basically helped him bust out of a dead-end job. It’s a feel-good story about a little guy making it big. Lots of smiles and applause from the crowd.

Joswiak says there are more than 25,000 apps now in the store, and there is lots of curiosity over the approval process (which some have complained is slow), but he says 98% of apps are approved in 7 days or less. Apple has now surpassed 800 million app downloads.

“We’ve created something profound,” he says, and we’re just 8 months in. Now Scott Forstall, SVP of iPhone software, is coming out to show the goods.

“This is a major update” to the iPhone OS, Forstall says.