Ok what the heck is this?

zynizen · #1 June 5th, 2007, 12:21 PM

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

um, am I seeing things right, I know microsoft has been planning this for a while, hence the history of the technology, but, seriously, I wanted apple to develop this stuff, so it actually works! (hence the iPhone's capabilities)

it pains me that microsoft is doing this.. fear of them spying on everything.., knowing who and what is being "plugged in" to surface..

Lt Major Burns · #2 June 5th, 2007, 12:33 PM

i'm willing to give microsoft a chance. this is good. they're moving into new directions. innovative directions.

ignore their bloated windows and office malarkies, that's just their obligation...

zynizen · #3 June 5th, 2007, 01:31 PM

If it's secure enough, and will not be tampered with, then I will give it a chance. After all, the demonstration of paying for different things, and shopping experiences, billing it right to your account, is risky business. They would have to work with all financial institutions worldwide to develop this further.

Interesting to see what happens though.

icemanjc · #4 June 5th, 2007, 03:54 PM

Makes Microsoft a little more interesting.
I wonder what there going to do about finger prints.

Ferdinand · #5 June 6th, 2007, 12:03 AM

I think this "touch-screen" table is a great innovation. Actually I'd love to have one of these at home. Think about all the possibilities of this product! You could organize your photos, watch family videos, write text and print it to your printer... send e-mails etc....

Thank The Cheese · #6 June 6th, 2007, 12:26 AM

It's easy to slip into anti-MS rants (especially in this forum

), but this looks very cool. Providing it works the way they advertise, this is a evry useful and innovative technology. Not something we're going to see in our homes IMO, but at restaurants and information booths etc, this would be fantastic.

I have 2 fears:
1) it is far away from being released, and is at risk of become vaporware
2) it is going to have some kind of proprietary Touch For Sure® technology which all digital cameras, MP3 players, and others will need to adopt in order to interface with it. If this is going to work -- it needs to be an open standard (or even better, it should work with existing standards).

**fryke** · #7 June 6th, 2007, 04:41 AM

Remember the rumours about a technology of a screen where each pixel is actively a camera? That'd blow _this_ tech away. I guess we haven't heard the first word about things like this.

nixgeek · #8 June 6th, 2007, 07:47 AM

Not to rain on everyone's parade here with Microsoft's Surface, but it runs Vista under the hood.

While that makes me raise an eyebrow, I wonder if this won't be a future feature in later versions of Vista (possibly something that we purposely haven't been able to see from Vista just yet).

Definitely something to keep an eye on.