Microsoft Surface is a tabletop multi touch computer code named as project Milan. Its an intelligent system which can “feel”. It is able to identify touches of different objects from a paint brush to a glass of beer and function accordingly.

Surface turns an ordinary tabletop into a dynamic surface that provides interaction with all forms of digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. You touch it with a paint brush and it will turn itself into a canvas so that you can paint a beautiful picture or you place a food plate on it and it might show you the ingredients of the food you are eating. This means that input providing devices need not to be digital in nature, your hand gesture is more than enough. Also this eliminates the requirement of traditional keyboard and mouse. And here is the best part, since it is multi touch you can “dip” your fingers in more than one color simultaneously and relive your KG class you had in school.

Microsoft classifies the Surface’s features in four main groups namely :-

* Direct Interaction : It means that user can simply touch the interface to interact with the system eleminating the need of keyboard and mouse.

* Multi-touch : The user can have multiple contact points unlike traditional touch screen.

* Multi-user : More than one person can work with Surface simultaneously. One can paint the sky while other will draw trees at the same time.

* Object Recognition : Surface can tell the difference between a beer glass, a plate full of food, your fingers and lot more. So if you touch the Surface with different objects different programs will start.

It has a 360-degree user interface, a 30-inch reflective surface with a XGA DLP projector underneath the surface which projects an image onto its underside, while four cameras in the machine’s housing record reflections of infrared light from objects and human fingertips on the surface. The multi touch feature of surface can respond to 52 touches at a time, AWESOME! The computer’s “vision” is created by a near-infrared, 850-nanometer-wavelength LED light source aimed at the surface. When an object touches the tabletop, the light is reflected to multiple infrared cameras with a net resolution of 1280 x 960, allowing it to sense, and react to items touching the tabletop.

At Microsoft’s MSDN Conference, Bill Gates told developers of “Maximum” setup the Microsoft Surface was going to have:
* Intel Core Quad Xeon “WoodCrest” @ 2.66GHz with a custom motherboard form factor about the size of two ATX motherboards.
* 4GB DDR2-1066 RAM
* 1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive
However, the current commercially available version has the following specifications:
* Intel Core 2Duo @ 2.13GHz (normal motherboard)
* 2GB DDR2 RAM
* 250GB Sata Hard Drive