Microsoft Surface 2- slimmer and less costly
—Perhaps you’ve seen the Microsoft Surface in hotel lobbies and bars. Microsoft has launched the second iteration of the product, the Surface 2.
Microsoft has partnered with Samsung for the hardware and is using an NEC camera, which MS calls “PixelSense”. As a result the Surface 2 has been slimmed down to a mere 4-inches thick, which basically means it can go any where a flat screen TV could go, not to mention it can display in full HD. Inside the box is a dual-core AMD Athlon II X2 and Radeon HD 6700M graphics cards supported by Windows 7′s GPU acceleration.
The screen itself measure 40-inches and much like the previous model it is still resistant to spills and heavy items. It can handle up to 50 simultaneous touch points, capture text (OCR) and work with a tagging system that can be adhered to the bottom of a can of soda or beer to enable apps to automatically launch when placed on the Surface.
The reported price of the Surface 2 is $7,600 – half the cost of the original – when it launches later this year.
Posted on 1/13/11
