Bill Gates showed surface computer table demo in ‘06

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 30 May 2007 16:07

Opinion and Analysis

We may have already seen a demo of a table computer, but the version unveiled on NBC’s Today Show and at the D: All Things Digital conference is a vastly improved, self contained version that goes on sale this year!

Set to retail for anywhere from US $5,000 to $10,000, Microsoft’s “Surface” is a new class of computer (running a highly customized version of Windows Vista) that takes interaction to a new and much more natural level that even comes with a new name: the NUI, or natural user interface.

Looking much like a coffee table, the Surface computer's 30-inch screen seems to be fully controlled by touch, as you manipulate objects on screen with your fingers. Paint, draw, play games, scan special barcodes on items when placed on the screen, interact with wireless devices, such as your camera, and see the photos ‘spill’ out onto the screen in front of you, which you and others can pull to themselves, spin around and resize – all at the same time.

Five special infrared cameras, a tough surface and other touch technologies are carefully deployed to capture users input, be it the flick of a finger or other hand and finger gestures. But instead of only accepting one finger at a time, the Surface is a multi-touch device, just like the iPhone, letting you resize a photo with two fingers, but even better still, happily accepts simultaneous multi-touch input from up to four different users – at the same time!

The Surface is a surface, so to speak, that needs to be seen to be truly appreciated. If you missed yesterday morning’s NBC Today show where viewers were lucky enough to be able to see a live demonstration of the unit by Mark Bolger, marketing director of Microsoft’s Surface Computing division, some links to demonstrations of what were clearly previous models that look pretty impressive all their own are the end of this article.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is also set to present Surface at today’s sessions of the D: All Things Digital conference. The conference organizers are expected to be posting some video of the event at their website, hopefully this will include video of Ballmer’s demonstration.

Because Surface is not yet shipping, and indeed has been in development for five years, only a few programs currently exist for Surface, with Microsoft and six specially selected third party companies working on more for launch later this year.

As the cost of initial versions is high, consumer models aren’t expect for the next two or three years, with hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues the way that consumers will be able to play with a Surface computer, with T-Mobile phone stores, and hotels/restaurants/public entertainment venues operators Starwood Hotels and Harrah’s Entertainment already signed up to buy multiple Surface computers to place in selected venues.

So, what about seeing a demonstration? Bill Gates clearly gave us one at his CES Keynote in 2006, where at the CES 2006 page on his website you can read a transcript and watch the keynote video for yourself. Where it happens on the transcript is 7 paragraphs down ‘at the airport’, so should happen within somewhere in the first 10-15 minutes of the video.

The site offers Windows Media streaming of the presentation at 56k, 128k and 300k quality, and is worth a look just to see where Bill Gates saw the technology working – where before the ‘airport’ scene he also showed a ‘mirror PC’ that hung on the wall but was fully touched controlled, clearly another version, and another form factor, as such, of the Surface PC at work, this time on the wall, instead of the table itself.

A very recent YouTube video of a Popular Mechanics segment gives a demonstration of Surface PC technology as well, although here it is called ‘Play Together’ – at less than 4 minutes it’s quick and easy to watch and even though it seems to use an external projection technology, as opposed to the Surface PC’s enclosed nature, it’s still quite amazing.

For more, there’s another YouTube video, about 10 months old shows more video of what the Surface computer was like back then.

So, the Surface computer has arrived, looking almost like the iPhone of computers, proving to critics that Microsoft has some innovation left within after all, despite have grown into a much, much larger company than when Windows first hit the streets.

As for the future? Microsoft’s Tom Gibbons, Corporate VP of the Entertainment & Devices division, explains that: “As our world continues to be permeated by digital content from music and photos to games, surface computers will put users back in control by making it easy and natural to interact with the digital world. Over time, we envision a wide range of surfaces with surface computing technology and believe that this will become pervasive both inside and outside of the home”.

It looks like the breakthrough for ‘natural’ computing has arrived thanks to the iPhone and the Surface computer – with Microsoft battling it out yet again with Apple. It might seem that the more things change, the more they stay the same, but with touch and surface computing, real change is finally coming at last.

In a world of incremental improvements to software and hardware, these are the kinds of refreshing changes that take technology to a whole new level. Welcome to the future, which as was said, hasn’t widely been distributed yet.

But one thing we do know: the future certainly is touching!