It’s not a touch screen, it’s a grab screen!’

Microsoft Corp unveiled Surface computer that is a coffee-table shaped computer that responds to touch and to special bar codes attached to everyday objects.

They are set to arrive in November in T-Mobile USA stores and properties owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. and Harrah's Entertainment Inc.

The coffee table computer is actually a Windows Vista PC tucked inside a shiny black table base, topped with a 30-inch touch screen in a clear acrylic frame. Five cameras that can sense nearby objects are mounted beneath the screen. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by setting real-world items tagged with special bar-code labels on top of it.

Unlike most touch screens, Surface can respond to more than one touch at a time. The price is estimated to be between $5,000 and $10,000 per unit.
Some of the first Surface models are planned to help customers pick out new cell phones at T-Mobile stores.

When customers plop a phone down on the screen, Surface will read its bar code and display information about the handset. Customers can also select calling plans and ring tones by dragging icons toward the phone.

Microsoft is working on a limited number of programs to ship with Surface, including one for sharing digital photographs.
Microsoft is making the Surface hardware itself, and has only given six outside software development firms the tools they need to make Surface applications.

According to analysts at Jupiter Research Surface is important for Microsoft as a promising new business, as well as demonstrating very concretely to the market that Microsoft still knows how to innovate, and innovate in a big way.