Microsoft has showed off "Surface," a coffee-table-shaped computer that responds to touch and to special bar codes attached to everyday objects.
The machines, which Microsoft unveiled at a technology conference in the USA is set to ship in November to organisations with a specific application use for the device.
Surface is essentially a Windows Vista PC tucked inside a shiny black table base, topped with a 30-inch touch screen in a clear acrylic frame. Five cameras that can sense nearby objects are mounted beneath the screen.
Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by setting real-world items tagged with special bar-code labels on top of it.
Unlike most touch screens, Surface can respond to more than one touch at a time.
