http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

I've read about this before but....wow... :o

Microsoft are doing something honestly innovative, original and almost certainly useful.

I'm shocked.

It's extremely pretty to boot - it's usefulness to a lot of service industries would be enormous.

I haven't seen this in action yet, but the outcry from the Apple camps is quite funny. Cries of "Ripoff" because it uses "multi-touch", even though its developer has probably been working on this well before iPhone was unveiled and that multitouch technology has been around for ages.

Blue Table of Death jokes are splitting sides across the globe.

I can see its use in a restaurant for ordering food, but i'm not sure how it would fit into my life (when it comes down to consumer level).

EDIT: I think I should include something about how it's good that MS are thinking outside the square and doing something a little different. I think my post above seemed a bit cynical and anti MS.

It's $10,000 or about $A12,000 here in Australia (which will probably go up to $A15,000 when it's released). Now, would I like to by a computer table or a car?

I'm pretty sure Microsoft only bought the technology as I have seen it before as a University presentation on the web.

I'm pretty sure I saw an Apple video that was pretty much identical before, But perhaps it was some other company. It looks great but it's hardly innovative.

Also as much as it'd improve my fitness, I'm hoping my work sticks to regular monitors + kb/m for now. <_<

It's cool, but definitely not innovative (i.e innovate by Microsoft). More like ripoffs, there are others that out before that. Check out Jeff Han stuff. Maybe they sold the idea to Microsoft, who knows. Same thing with Vista, it's nice and stable, but got features from both Macintosh and Linux.

in Microsoft's defense, Windows was innovative once...

This isn't the first time multi-input touch screens have been used. I saw a video from TED a while ago about featuring the technology. I assume Microsoft's probably bought this technology, added a camera underneath (which is what senses when a device is placed on it) and wi-fi and probably bluetooth (does it have bluetooth?) and maybe some other stuff. Still, it's an awesome piece of tech, but Microsoft definitely didn't invent the technology driving it, just the programming and application of the technology.

Why not buy both :)

Well i find that rather usefull, so il certainly be intrested in this product. The price could be less, but the price is not going to down my intrest.

This will never catch on.

Why not ? I am already intrested :P