Touch 2.0

Microsoft Surface gives touch an unprecedented push

Here is a look at the future. You are looking to buy a new car and walk into a showroom,where the salesman shows you the cars features on a touch-enabled surface. You want to customise the interiors with your favourite fabric. You keep a piece of the fabric on the surface and it immediately simulates how the cars seats and interiors will look if you use the fabric. You like how it looks and keeps your phone on the surface to download the images into your device. You give your business card to the salesman who keeps it on the surface which records all your contact details as well as the customisation you are looking for. The future is called Microsoft Surface 2.0. The future begins this September.

Well,lets get one thing clear. This is not a giant tablet. This is a device that can change the very paradigm of computing,thanks to its Natural User Interface (NUI) which incorporates multi-touch like no other device. Plus,no other device has this level of object recognition, explains Moorthy Uppaluri,General Manager of Microsofts Developer and Platform Evangelism.

The Surface runs on a 40 Samsung SUR40 touchscreen LCD,preferably laid down like a table so that multiple users can collaborate towards a common goal. The 4 thick screen can also be mounted on the walls,though that will reduce the multiple user functionality to some extent.

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Microsoft already has several launch customers who have committed to deploy version 2.0. This is still a pre-production unit and some aspects have not yet been perfected, says Somanna Palacanda,Director of Surface Marketing,giving a demo of the Surface 2.0 in New Delhi. Somanna uses a small paint brush,instead of his fingers,to navigate on the screen. While the brush helps keep the screen clean in grime-filled conditions,it also displays the effectiveness of the touchscreen which doesnt need much prodding and pushing to work. The screen is based on Microsofts Pixel Sense technology where infrared sensors are interspersed between the pixels. So,the screen can actually see and it is this information that is processed, explains Somanna,running an app which shows how the screen can identify multiple fingers individually and keep track of it as you move them around the screen.

The Surface is the largest piece of Gorilla Glass ever used on an LCD screen and can take a lot of wear and tear. The surface is also unaffected by liquid spills, says Somanna. Microsoft is now looking at its large developer community to come up with applications for the Surface 2.0. Since Surface is based on Windows 7,developers can write code on the existing platforms and transfer it to Surface. They dont need the device to create progammes, explains Moorthy. Customers,however,will need to get the customised applications created by either Microsoft or its partners to make full use of the Surface.

We have already seen tremendous interest from corporates in India. We see banking,retail,hospitality and real estate as the driving force for the product, says Moorthy,adding that personal computing options could be a possibility in the near future. The Surface 2.0 is already being used by the Royal Bank of Canada,Hard Rock Café in the US,Disney,MSNBC and other companies.