Microsoft’s new baby: TouchWall, is similar to Surface which is out in AT&T stores just recently on 17th April.
Surface is a multi-touch and vision system that uses cameras to sense what is on the table, a coffee table to be exact, where it is and what it is doing.
Surface can determine, for example, if a cell phone is on the table and then interact with the phone in a variety of ways, such as pulling photos off of it.
TouchWall is a fundamentally simpler mechanical system, and is also significantly cheaper to produce. While Surface retails at around $10,000, the hardware to “turn almost anything into a multi-touch interface” for TouchWall is just “hundreds of dollars” says Sands.
TouchWall consists of three infrared lasers that scan a surface.
A number of activities can be done like scrolling though mixed media on a desktop with his hands, infinite zooming in and our, playing media, and even using a drawing tool to turn the entire screen into a whiteboard.
Microsoft is quick to say that they have no current plans to productize and sell TouchWall.
But the potential of the system is obvious where the future of our computing experience is less monitor/keyboard/mouse!
In the meantime, since TouchWall is not commerically available – we can still review and purchase the Surface!
Watch a first-hand review by On 10 – it’s very informative and at 20 mins long, i think it’s worth watching.
After all these inventions, i think the credit still goes to Jeff Han, a research scientist at NYU, who came up with similar technology 2 years back.
This guy is my idol already!
HOWEVER, there are always sceptics.
And this is one of those around, from Sarcastic Gamer. I have no idea if you’ll laugh or cry now.
