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I first saw a Microsoft Surface (table) presentation at their research facility in Boston. The next time that I went up there they were piloting the table at the Hilton as well. I feel like that they were definitely operating without the intent of monetizing it, but damn, I would love to see those tables at restaurants, etc.

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I played with the surface for a bit at the NERD in Cambridge too. I found it slow, and unresponsive. It was, and still is a great proof of concept but i'm not sure the tech is ready to be a product yet.

I played a few words of scrabble on some version of the surface a few years ago (i think spring 2011), and it could handle 4 people using all ten fingers at once. when did you use the surface?

The first time was a couple of years ago and it was a demonstration with a Windows Mobile phone fanning out with contacts. This was given by a marketing type person, and could have been completely a sham.

The second time was about three years ago during St. Patrick's day at the Hilton. I was able to use most of the applications described above.

I remember testing one and it couldn't detect more than two fingers. There was some piano app and you couldn't play a chord with three notes.

That could easily have been a software limitation in that program rather than hardware limitation.

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