Is Microsoft Surface a practical reality?
The Community-Credit forums has a discussion currently underway on the topic of Microsoft Surface Computing. I was busy responding to the thread when I thought, hey this is blog post worthy, so here it is.
I must say that I'm very impressed with Microsoft's surface computing initiative but I wonder how fast and prolific its adoption will be. Its great to see that the technology is built on the stock standard Windows Vista platform and I presume its using Windows Presentation Foundation to drive the user experience. It makes complete sense to bring this all together in table top computing and I envisage that vendor kiosks will never be the same again. I personally can't wait to be able to see them in restaurants and media stores. Think how much easier it would be to browse magazines and newspapers in book stores without damaging the actual magazine or book. Yes no more crumpled pages in the middle of your rather expensive I.T. book purchase.
The video demos I've seen have looked really cool and innovative but I question the credit card recognition. Was the credit card tagged with a barcode as the credit card was placed face-up from what I could tell. The same goes for the cellular phones. Most cellular phones I've seen don't have a barcode visible; its normally tucked away behind the battery.
This leads me onto a more pressing question. How is security going to affect the integration with devices like the Zune media player and devices in general? What happens when I plonk a Zune onto the surface computer inside a local music store and want to transfer data to my device, do I have to establish some sort of wireless pairing between the devices? I think this is just one of the rather limiting factors from a practicality point of view.
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