Microsoft's table-sized tablet Surfaces for pre-order

[DainBramaged]

Almost a year after being demoed at the Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft's next-generation Surface hardware is almost ready for customers. The giant, table-sized tablet, also wall-mountable, can now be pre-ordered from Samsung resellers in 23 countries, including the United States. Its release is slated for sometime in early 2012, Microsoft and Samsung said today.

With a reported price of around $8,400, the Surface—or "Samsung SUR40 for Microsoft Surface" as it's being called—is targeted at businesses and large organizations. Dassault Aviation, Fujifilm, and Royal Bank of Canada are planning to deploy some of the first units. Navigating to the pre-order page doesn't give you the option to drag SUR40 into an online shopping cart. Instead, prospective customers are given the phone numbers and e-mail addresses of Samsung representatives in each of the 23 countries in which the supersized device will be sold.

Running Windows 7 and Surface 2.0 software, SUR40 has a 40-inch screen measured diagonally, 1,920 X 1,080 resolution, a contrast ratio of 2,000:1, an AMD GPU along with 2.9GHz Athlon X2 dual-core processors, 320GB of storage, and 4GB of memory. Ports include Ethernet, HDMI, and 4 USB 2.0 ports.

The original Surface came out in 2008, well before Apple's iPad made multi-touch tablets commonplace. But Surface aims for an entirely different market, while taking both size and multi-touch to the extreme. Surface has more than 50 simultaneous touch points enabled by PixelSense, which "allows an LCD display to recognize fingers, hands, and objects placed on the screen." The new hardware is just 4 inches thick, about half the previous thickness, and it is "touch-enabled from start to finish," meaning no keyboard and mouse are needed for setup and configuration, according to Microsoft.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/11/microsofts-table-sized-tablet-surfaces-in-pre-order.ars

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. Hammacher Schlemmer!

:woohoo:

Go 1%, go!

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. two competitors will come out,

and sales will lag because, well, first, it IS windozes.

In a year, Apple will come out with a version that not only takes it leaps beyond this big game table, they will offer a holographic 3-D display for engineers, gamers, schools, surgeons, and more.

[DainBramaged]

5. That's the next step, 3D and all of a sudden you have a great workstation

first generation, it will get better.....

[Tesha]

11. Will it come with beeping booping sound effects?

[ChairmanAgnostic]

12. I sure hope so. Or at least a sound track, rarely heard, of someone

on their way to a classic orgasm.

[slackmaster]

3. In 1975 the UCSD Student Center had a table with a Pong machine built into it

So two people could sit across from each other and compete over a couple of beers.

[david_vincent]

9. There's one of those at Funspot in NH

And as for this version of Captain Billy's Whizbang: I've got 320 gigs of storage in my ancient G4 iBook. They couldn't give it at least a couple of TBs?? WTF??

[Bosonic]

4. I'm not a business or large organization

But $8400 seems like a big premium for wrapping up what is essentially a sub-par PC in a pretty bow.

$8400 could buy some serious computing kit.

[DainBramaged]

6. A 40" Samsung pure PC monitor is $1700.......... a table is much easier to work at

[HopeHoops]

7. The storage and memory specs are a little lame but at least it has a good processor.

Still, that's pretty much where computers are going and I suspect it won't be long before they're somewhat commonplace.

I just had a discussion with my youngest (16) about the various replacements for chalk boards and white boards. She was bitching because the ones in the middle school, while monochrome, actually worked and the Promethium boards at the high school are pieces of shit that NEVER work. The teachers use overhead projectors (like when I was in school in the 70's) and project the transparencies ONTO the Promethium boards. That's really sad, but that's the way it is.

I remember over 10 years ago testing a device that was a precursor to them. It was basically a bar about the size of a laptop battery that attached to any white board with suction cups. You had four special pens. When you pushed in to write, the suction cup device would triangulate on the pen's position (and its id) to capture the movement and translate it to whatever computer was hooked up to it (serial cable). It only worked if you moved REALLY slowly. Not quite ready for prime time.

[NeedleCast]

8. Don't Really See What It Has To Offer That a SmartWall, For Example, Doesn't Already Do

I'm sure there are niche uses, but it seems like this sort of technology has existed for several years now, in different forms.

[emulatorloo]

10. You can't eat a sandwich on a smart wall, for instance.

I agree with you, the table form factor seems odd to me.