Is this really the future? I just stumbled on a Microsoft site, specifically Surface. It shows some very neat Table which uses some current technologies to provide a rich and interactive experience with its consumer. It's basically just a table with a very large touch screen as its table top. Sounds simple? Think again!
The Table (which Microsoft calls as Microsoft Surface) is a table with a mounted LCD panel. The panel is touchscreen, which means you can interact with the display. Also, it has the ability to communicate with Wireless devices such as cellphones and PDA's (this feature is like the coolest of them all).
This new product is aimed at restaurants, hotels and other facilities but not intentionally targetted at home users. Though its fun to have this at your house. The rumored cost of this baby is between $5k-$10k. Quite expensive will you say? But I guess you will be able to see this baby on popular restaurants soon. Just imagine you checking the menu that's displayed on your table instead of the usual crumpled menu. Amazing isn't it?
Though this release was dubbed as Microsoft's Marketing Strategy against the Apple's iPhone release. Which I think is pretty quite possible.
Here's some links:
Home Page
Bill Gates' Demo