LAS VEGAS–HP, the world biggest computer maker is making its HP SkyRoom video conferencing software and service available for free on its new line of business notebooks and workstations.  The announcement was made at CES.

Last month, I spoke with HP's Jim Christensen about SkyRoom.  He says that the HP's patented technology keeps the images at a high quality with little degradation due to bandwidth.  

While the service is free on the new HP computers, it is available for a one-time fee of $149.  It works on Windows 7, Vista, and XP.

The service only works behind a corporate firewall.

High quality collaborative video software is a big story at CES this year.  Cisco is also making news with the consumer extension of its TelePresence video conferencing business.  We blogged about this earlier today.

Andy Plesser, Executive Producer