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Apple Touch-screen vs. Microsoft Touch-screen

Apple Touch-screen vs. Microsoft Touch-screen



Microsoft is introducing a touch-screen table-top computer today, one that lets several people play with photos, music and other programs with the touch of their fingers -- and all at the same time.

Microsoft is expected to preview Microsoft Surface -- code-named "Milan" -- at today's D5: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad.

Incidetally, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates will be joined on stage at the D conference by rival Steve Jobs, who showcased some new Apple touch-screen technology earlier this year as part of his preview of the iPhone. The duo will engage in a conversation moderated by the conference organizers.


The iPhone uses touch-screen technology instead of standard buttons to dial phone numbers, type messages, click on Web links, zoom in and out, etc. Microsoft Surface, five years in the making, works on a much larger plane -- a 30-inch display that's about the size of a coffee table.

Users can sit around the table and move photos around the screen, or select music by sorting through albums. Microsoft is teaming up with partners such as T-Mobile, which will use them in their stores to sell and display their cell phones and cell phone plans and Sheraton, which will put them in select hotel lobbies for guests.

In the future, it could also be used at restaurants, allowing patrons to order from their table and take care of the bill -- all without flagging down a waiter.

The computer can recognize special tags, which, if built into a credit card, magnetic key or other device, could be placed on the tabletop and enable people to move information from the computer to the item with the swipe of a finger.

Though it won't be available for the mass market, Pete Thompson, Microsoft's general manager for Microsoft Surface, said he can imagine it being available to the public in about three years, as well as in different forms besides a tabletop. Currently, the estimated price is about $5,000 to $10,000 a piece.

"We can see three years from now we could walk into a retailer and ask for the surface computing devices and they'll be a whole new aisle," he said. "It's the beginning of a new trend."