Windows 7 out in 18 months

[AK65]

Of those that use Vista, I can think of around fifteen.

I feel very sorry for them lol! But, fools and money are soon parted....

 

[The_Unbeliever]

@ slappy - "surface" looks cool, but :

1. How are you going to type on it?
2. How will you play games (such as adventure, duke nukem 3d, flight simulator {to give a few examples}) on it?
3. How long will the surface last?
4. Think of the common secretary - will she be comfortable with this sort of thing?

 

[tristan]

Man that Surface is gonna be awesome!!
At the last tech ed here they had a vid of their plans for the future... unbelievable foresight. Looks like they moving big time into the mobile hardware arena.

You can try this out now if you like. Have a look at
Low-Cost Multi-touch Whiteboard using the Wiimote

 

[SlappY]

@ slappy - "surface" looks cool, but :

1. How are you going to type on it?
2. How will you play games (such as adventure, duke nukem 3d, flight simulator {to give a few examples}) on it?
3. How long will the surface last?
4. Think of the common secretary - will she be comfortable with this sort of thing?

I believe it is sposed to be part of the automated home they are going for.
It is not a replacement but more of an addition. You know so you get home and instead of plonking the camera or phone onto the PC, you dump it on the table. I know for one I dont sync my phone that often cause it is sometimes a mission to whip out the lappy, etc. But here as you walk through the door, you place your wallet, key and phone on the table, and it syncs with everything. They are also looking at this online desktop thing too, so you could go to your mates place and use his surface / PC or whatever as if it were your own. As for input, there is a software keyboard that pops up, it is even resizable for people with porky digits.

The idea is, you got a home server with your media that streams to your xbox and home theatre. For your social needs you have a MS surface, where your PC gaming and work will still get dont on a normal PC in the study or something. All in sync all aware of each other. They are trying to get the PC off the desktop and more pervasive in your life. They are also moving your online profile into more things, like email (done already I know) and IM and with integration into your VOIP network at the office. So your profile follows you around whereever you go. So you get a call while at the office, you transfer it to your cell via a data VOIP connection, you walk out the office still chatting on the phone, you get home and patch it through to your home phone. Never dropping the call once. And they want to apply the same logic to all your computing needs. Obviously you need to be thinking first world here. For this they are releaseing another communications suite (sorry I forget the name) that handles all of this for your office VOIP. They did a demo of it at last years Tech Ed.

As for how long it will last. Well since it is simply a sheet of glass with cameras mounted behind it I would say indefinitely. You could pour a glass of water over it and it would be fine.

On a side note, as an experiment some students modded Warcraft III to work off a hand gesture mechanism not unlike the MS surface.
(aahh here we go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwJOQ6ZIV00 )