This isn’t a new product name for Microsoft. Microsoft introduced the “Microsoft Surface” five years ago. That time, the Surface was a 30-inch—and later 40-inch--diagonal tabletop computer intended for businesses, with a multitouch display that could recognize bar-coded objects placed upon it. By 2009, you could find Surface computers in the occasional bar, bank, or retailer; I even spotted them occasionally in corporate lobbies or lounges. In 2011, Microsoft updated the Surface, making it thinner, lighter, and incorporating Corning’s Gorilla Glass, a chemically strengthened material used in iPhones and other mobile devices.
The Microsoft Surface wasn’t cheap—the original price was $15,000, coming down to $7600 last year—but there have been rumors that a consumer version was in the works, and any day now, it seemed, we’d be
So I’ve been waiting for a consumer Surface, thinking it was going to be really really cool. I thought it would turn my kitchen counter into a space-age command center, allowing me to spin pictures and push recipes around and, oh, maybe design a building or two while dinner is in the oven. Sure, I may be squinting at a little computer screen now, but in a couple of years, in my Microsoft-seeded fantasies, I knew I’d have a gigantic Surface to play with.
The reimagined consumer Surface, introduced yesterday, does have a few things in common with the tabletop Surface. It’ll run Windows, of course, and it has a multitouch screen. And the display surface will be Gorilla Glass.
But even if it’s a great little pad computer, I sure wouldn’t call 10.6 inches of display a Surface.
Photo top left: Surface circa 2012
Photo center right: Surface circa 2008
Video below: Bill Gates introducing the Surface, 2008
Follow me on Twitter @TeklaPerry
