Microsoft unveils touch-screen computer

Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday took the wraps off Surface, a coffee-table-shaped computer that responds to touch and to special bar codes attached to everyday objects.

The machines are set to arrive in November in T-Mobile USA stores and properties owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. and Harrah’s Entertainment Inc.

Surface is essentially a Windows Vista PC tucked inside a shiny black table base, topped with a 30-inch touchscreen in a clear acrylic frame. Five cameras that can sense nearby objects are mounted beneath the screen.

Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by setting real-world items tagged with special bar-code labels on top of it.

Unlike most touchscreens, Surface can respond to more than one touch at a time. During a demonstration with a reporter last week, Mark Bolger, the Surface Computing group’s marketing director, “dipped” his finger in an on-screen paint palette, then dragged it across the screen to draw a smiley face. Then he used all 10 fingers at once to give the face a full head of hair.

With a price tag of $5,000 to $10,000 per unit, Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft isn’t immediately aiming for the finger-painting set. The company said it expects prices to drop enough to make consumer versions feasible in three to five years.