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Microsoft unveils touchscreen-PC-cum-tabletop
Sci-fi style "surface computer" unveiled...

By Ina Fried

Published: Wednesday 30 May 2007

Microsoft is taking the wraps off 'Milan' - a secret project five years in the making and the first in what the company hopes will be a long line of "surface computers".

The Microsoft Surface tabletop PC, for which Redmond has created both the hardware and software, offers shades of the technology seen in the sci-fi thriller Minority Report. The whole unit is controlled entirely through touch - there's no mouse or keyboard.

To paint, people can pick up a paint brush or just dip their fingers in virtual paint cups. Sharing photos is similarly intuitive. A stack of pictures can be easily sorted through and shared. To resize a photo, just stretch two fingers apart. Pivot the fingers and the image rotates. More than one person can be interacting with the computer at a time.

Pete Thompson, the former T-Mobile executive who runs Microsoft's surface-computing business, said: "It's very approachable. You just want to touch it."

However, while consumers will be able to touch it later this year, most won't be able to buy a surface computer any time soon.

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The expensive components required to allow multiple users to touch the device simultaneously give it a price tag approaching $10,000. As a result, Microsoft isn't targeting homes initially, though it hopes consumers can own their own Milan within three to five years. For now, Microsoft is focusing on getting the products into public spaces in the hospitality arena - hotel lobbies, restaurants and casinos, to name a few.

The company's initial customers are cellular carrier T-Mobile, which will use the units in its retail stores; hotel operator Starwood, which owns brands including Sheraton and Westin; casino owner Harrah's; and slot game maker IGT. Each of the initial partners should have a few initial machines up and running around November, Thompson said.

Thompson said the rollout approach is similar to that taken by the tech industry with plasma displays, which were used in trade show booths for years while they were still too costly for the home.

Sheraton vice president Hoyt Harper said Microsoft's tactic is pretty savvy, noting that many guests who might see the product in a Sheraton lobby could easily be among those who will buy one when it finally does go on sale widely. "I think that's one reason they chose us," he said.

Harper said the computers fit perfectly into his company's efforts to turn its hotel lobbies into destinations rather than merely places people stop on their way somewhere else. That, he said, makes them easily worth their high price tag.

Initially, Sheraton plans to have three Milan machines at hotels in Boston, Chicago and New York, with two in each lobby and one in the club lounge. If that means people are lining up, said Harper, all the better.

Another consideration, in addition to cost, is how well Milan holds up to wear and tear. Harrah's CIO Tim Stanley wants to make sure the machines are built to last before he starts placing them in casinos on the Vegas strip.

If he puts one in the Pure nightclub, for example, "they might dance on the table", he said. "Can it handle that?"

At its core, Milan is powered by a fairly standard high-end Vista PC with an off-the-shelf graphics card, 3GHz Pentium 4 processor and 2GB of memory. To make the touchscreen work, Microsoft crams a lot of other stuff into its tabletop unit. Underneath the roughly textured scratch-proof and spill-proof surface covering the top of the unit, five infrared cameras sense fingers or other objects touching the surface, while a DLP projector turned on its side generates the screen image people see.

The software behemoth hopes to get the technology into lots of other areas, such as the education market, in addition to the consumer market. Although the initial customers are getting the same tabletop design, Microsoft said the product will eventually come in other shapes and sizes, including vertical, or stand-up units.

CNET News.com's Greg Sandoval contributed to this report

Ina Fried writes for CNET News.com