T-Mobile Orders Microsoft's Latest "Coffee-Table" PC"

Microsoft has taken the wraps off "Surface," a coffee-table shaped computer that responds to touch and to special bar codes attached to everyday objects.

The machines, which Microsoft planned to debut today at a technology conference in California, are set to arrive in November in T-Mobile USA stores.

Surface is essentially a Windows Vista PC tucked inside a shiny black table base, topped with a 30-inch (76-centimeter) touchscreen in a clear acrylic frame. Five cameras that can sense nearby objects are mounted beneath the screen. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by setting real-world items tagged with special bar-code labels on top of it.

The PC's will be selling for between $5,000 and $10,000 per unit, so T-Mobile must be convinced of the benefits of installing them in their stores.

Some of the first Surface models are planned to help customers pick out new cell phones at T-Mobile stores. When customers plop a phone down on the screen, Surface will read its bar code and display information about the handset. Customers can also select calling plans and ringtones by dragging icons toward the phone.

Microsoft is working on a limited number of programs to ship with Surface, including one for sharing digital photographs."

Posted to the site on 30th May 2007