Imagine walking into a modern restaurant, you sit down and are immediately attended to.

Your drink come quickly and when you need the bill you and your friend, without a hassle, split the bill and pay with your credit card within 30seconds of taking it out. This is not a fantasy, this is reality.

With Microsoft’s Surface, a tabletop computer, user’s can shop, explore a variety of things, connect devices (MP3 players, cameras and more), play music/video and listen to music interactively at the touch of a finger.  Essentially it is just a Windows Vista PC with some special software on top and some cameras below. So where did this come from?

History

Touch computing isn’t a new concept, in fact it was first conceived in the early eighties, but using it in the service industry is. And that’s what Microsoft plan to do. Several years (2001) in the making, it began as a concept for interactive games for children but, after presenting the idea to Bill Gates (2003), they changed the direction to focus on the service industry.  The first prototype was an Ikea table top :-| and the final design was finished somewhere in 2005.

The Future

With more Wow than Vista, the unit is expected to launch towards the end of 2007, but with a rather hefty $5000-$10000 price tag it’s going to take some time to penetrate the market.  Also, since touch screen computing isn’t a new technology, I can see many copycat designs arriving - not that it will do everything the surface can do, but it will be cheaper.

Conclusion

I can’t wait.