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Surface To Air
We like the new Microsoft Surface touch screen table, which was announced yesterday. Touch screens must be the next big thing, then: Microsoft's announcement comes a couple of weeks ahead of the arrival on US shelves of Apple's iPhone, which replaces a keyboard with a multitouch screen.
Unlike the iPhone, Surface is unlikely to fit in your pocket anytime soon. Instead, it resembles one of those old Space Invaders games that were fixtures in pubs in the early 1980s. We wonder how it will react to people placing their pint glasses on the screen, though at least surface users won't have to cope with ash trays sliding into their line of vision, now that smoking is banned from most pubs, restaurants and hotel spaces - the main market for Surface, apparently.
The videos Microsoft has produced for the product are suitably slick (though we Brits can never get used to that US pronunciation of leisure - "leeesure"). Photos and files can be shifted round the tabletop, and the thirty inch screen can recognise objects such as mobile phones and transfer files between associated devices.
The price - a couple of grand - will put most home users off, though Russian oligarchs and Premiership footballers will doubtless have Surface installed in their residences soon. The rest of us can wait until the price comes down, though Microsoft says that Surface's technology will shortly be available in smaller formats for domestic use.
