Microsoft Surface launch

By Staff Writers on 10 February 2010

Years after Microsoft demoed its "big-ass table", Surface has finally had its Australian release.

Australia is the 19th country in the world to get the technology, which so far focuses on commercial — primarily retail and education — applications. A user-facing unit will set a company back AU$21,000, but if you want to develop for the platform, it'll cost you AU$24,000.

While partners and execs were wheeled out in the usual Microsoft fanfare, only three Surface apps were really shown off: Lonely Planet's, which allows users to pull information based on what travel guide they place on the table; nsquared's learning tool, which involves a rotating animal that appears and up to four players having to spell its name using letters littered throughout the screen; and ANZ's app, which rather than focusing on finance, instead brought up information about tennis, and quizzed users where in the world tennis players come from.

Who knows what lies beneath the Surface? Well, we know — a bit. There are five cameras, one in each corner and one in the middle that detects what you place on the screen. There's also a rear projection unit, which is what shows the image. There's also a "Vista era" PC inside, which one developer hazarded to guess is probably a Core 2 Duo with ATI graphics.

(Credit: Craig Simms/CNET Australia)

Topics: touch, surface, microsoft, lonely planet, anz, australia, multitouch

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Comments (6)

  • StefanP commented on 15/02/2010 17:18

    They have something similar at the Eureka Skydeck. This looks far more promising. Imagine all the interactive applications this could have for areas like that one. If they can build innovative apps then I see this expanding to become more useful.

    @Jeddy
    How stupid can they get? Not realising what the target audience is. :P
    It even says that it is only available commercially so how, and why (at that price) would a consumer buy it? oh the ignorance.

  • rob m commented on 10/02/2010 21:39

    So how are you going to fit that in your pocket?! People complaining iPad is too big and useless ... well say hello to your big useless friend! I wonder how years (decades) it will take MS to shrink this down to ipad size. The only possible use for this is a giant piano you can walk and jump on to play ... like in the movie Big :)

  • Jeddy commented on 12/02/2010 14:30

    it not a consumer product u dingbat, and the technology cant be shrunk, it needs the space underneath it for the camera, projector to work

  • smurface commented on 10/02/2010 21:30

    Oh well, at least one of Microsoft's vaporware promises came to life ... pity it's so big, costs so much, and has little to no consumer value.
    Still, I guess it shows if you throw enough money at something, eventually even Microsoft may make something vaguely cool.
    Now we just have to wait for MS to overcome all those issues I listed above to make it relevant. Or we could all just buy iphones and ipod touches now. Software updates will add what we don't already have in time.

  • Jeddy commented on 12/02/2010 14:33

    I'll quote myself, "it's not a consumer product u dingbat"

  • Gr@w/!x commented on 10/02/2010 21:21

    Yawn.

    Surface is so yesterday.

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