Really big.

I've had my eye on Microsoft Surface ever since I followed a link on the Visual Studio start page RSS feed.  I remember thinking that it had a very bright future.  Rarely is a technology - or should I say consumer technology - so compelling that it makes me have to have it.  I wasn't particularly impressed by the iPhone, for example.

So when I got to see and interact with actual Microsoft Surface tables at the PDC in Los Angeles last week, I gravitated immediately to them.  It was tough to find a free spot around them.  They are even more impressive in person than on the videos.

The Surface is an impressive piece of hardware.  It supports multi-touch (as do several tablet PCs and the iPhone), but not just two points like most devices.  Surface supports dozens of touch points simultaneously.  At 30" screen size, it is more than accomodating for all 10 fingers of the number of people that could reasonably fit around the table.  But more than just multi-touch, it is equipped with cameras that can recognize objects placed on its surface, like bar codes.  It uses heuristic analysis to detect things like cups or business cards.  It responds to Blue Tooth devices like Windows Mobile phones and automatically interacts with them in the context of the application, e.g., when using picture collage for Surface, your phone will automatically spill its saved images onto the canvas.  From there you can move the picture with your fingertips from the collage surface to the Flickr receiver, which is detected automatically by its relationship to your phone.  Really, really cool stuff.

At the PDC, they gave us little plastic cards (probably equipped with RFID).  When put down on a surface, your contact info, which was assoicated with the card when they scanned your badge as they gave it to you, would expose a virtual card with your name, pulled from Windows Live.  Your contact began floating about in a matrix-like stream of other contacts.  You could simply snatch a contact out of the stream, drag it on to your card, and it would automatically be added to your Windows Live contacts, accessible from your mobile phone or any internet device.

And then, of course, you can play chess with your fingers.  Not quite like the real thing, although if you had a piece set with RFID chips in their bases, you could play on a virtual board.  Why not just use a physical board, you ask?  For starters, the board could highlight valid moves as you pick up a piece and prevent illegal moves.  The board could save a replay of the game as you play it.  It could track live stats in integration with an online chess game, so whether you meet up an opponent on the screen or in a coffee shop you have integrated gameplay history.  And for more experienced players against a beginner, the expert could be handicapped by the Surface helping the beginner by making gameplay move suggestions, e.g., "If you move there, you'll likely lose the piece to your opponent's pawn."

Surface can be used in restaurants to order meals directly from the table.  Surface can be used to bring life to tabletop D&D.  Surface can be used in supermarkets to help people base a meal around an ingredient placed on the surface (whose packaging was tagged with RFID, like Walmart does today).  The undertable camera could pick out produce.  Surface could be used as an internet enabled coffee table that controls your wall-mounted TV's on-demand cable, allowing you to pick internet video streams to show on the main screen, buy products online, see contextual information about what you're watching...

The possibilities are endless.  I believe after Surface prices come down and the HDTV is a living room standard, the Surface will be the next "must-have" living room luxury accoutrement.

I believe that Microsoft thinks so too.  That's why they gave everybody at the PDC a mini-surface: an Acer 11" multi-touch laptop.  Surface is the platform for amazing applications, and the best way to get amazing applications is to unleash Surface-like hardware on their development community.  Brilliant business strategy.  Expensive, too.  They must expect that it will pay off; laptops aren't free.  For my part, I hope it does - I really, really want a Surface.