The New Table Top System: Microsoft's Surface computer

The first example of Microsoft Surface is a table, just short of two feet high, with a 21-by-42-inch top. Under a sheet of acrylic is a 30-inch hi-res horizontal display. That's all you see—the five camera-sensors, the DLP light engine, and the Vista computer that makes it all run are hidden, encased in the body of what looks like a more-fashionable version of the original Pong game. (Presumably, the device runs a version of Vista that doesn't ask you all the time if you're sure you want to proceed.) But the impact of all that hardware is evident as soon as you touch the "massively multi-touch" surface. The machine can process dozens of inputs at once, from one person or a group. Whether you're doing virtual finger painting, moving digital images around like physical pieces of paper, or pointing to something on a map and getting information on that spot, it's clear that the standard sci-fi movie vision of having people interact with virtual surfaces as if they're real (see "Tron," “Minority Report” and many other flicks) has now arrived.