The Samsung SUR40 has a 40" 1,920 x 1,080 pixel display, a 178° viewing angle, and an Athlon X2 Dual-Core CPU. It's just over 1m wide by 71cm, and weighs 39.5 kg, and comes with Windows 7 Professional x64, 4GB of RAM, and a 320GB hard drive. Available through Samsung resellers, the estimated street price is $8,400 in the U.S. for the base unit. [Samsung]

  • mkultra

    I played with a Surface on a Holland America cruise ship this summer… what a piece of crap. It only had a couple of apps on it, the touchscreen was buggy and slow, and what it did have was almost entirely useless. A tic-tac-toe game. Some stock photos of animals you could move around and look at. An interactive screensaver that makes fake ripples on water. My wife and I looked at it for a full 5 minutes before returning to our iPads.

    On the bright side, it was very good at holding our drinks: they didn’t fall off or anything.

    • SpaceBeers

      You could use your iPad to hold drinks as well but I can’t promise they wouldn’t fall off. For the sake of $8K I’d take my chances.

    • digi_owl

      Lets not confuse Surface 1 with the back projection and IR cameras, with Surface 2, that is referenced to in this “article”, that uses pr pixel detection and a LCD display.

  • thebelgianpanda

    I saw one at a MSFT store recently and also came away unimpressed.  I like the idea and seems like it would be a perfect fit for creative applications.  But it isn’t baked enough, at least for me.

  • mebejoe

    On the Samsung product page there is a tab entitled “Success Case”.

    The associated page is blank.

  • doomcake

    I’m guessing the 2012 model might have made some improvements on the 2007 version

  • voiceinthedistance

    I have a set of four chairs that seem like the might look OK with this, but they run Windows 2000.  Are they compatible?

  • vonbobo

    I’m excited for Apple to invent this in a couple of years.

  • Brainspore

    I remember the first time I saw a demo video for one of these- I think it was right after Apple first announced the iPhone. An Apple-hating coworker of mine presented it as evidence that Microsoft was the truly innovative, game-changing company. I guess we’ll find out in a few years if these tables have a bigger impact on the tech-scape than touchscreen smartphones and tablets.

  • hadlockk

    I played with one of these in the museum inside the capitol building in Mexico City. Freaking amazing. Multi-touch surface on a 40″ display is really cool and gives you a sense of “hey this is the /Future/ – minority report is right around the corner”. Most of the museum goers just passed it by, ignoring it as a static video display, but once they saw me using it, spinning photos and videos around, zooming in maps, photos and videos and “throwing them away” off the edge of the screen,  a huge crowd of people gathered around it and were playing with it by the time I left.

    Definitely something for museums and board rooms now, but in 5-10 years it will be neat to start seeing these in homes.

  • http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo

    A mere 320GB drive, in an $8k system?

    Stingy, or what?

    • Cowicide

      And only 1,920 x 1,080?  Lame.

  • Dan Allard
  • aynrandspenismighty

    Talk to me when I can play holographic monster chess (ala The Millenium Falcon). Does have an version with Windows ME?

  • digi_owl

    They should have sold it with a variable angle mounting so that people could use it as a digital drafting table or similar.

  • GregS

    What happens to the Surface when you spill your coffee on it? 

    • digi_owl

      Nothing, it got a single piece of gorilla glass covering the whole thing.

  • http://www.mrericsir.com MrEricSir

    I saw an early model at Siggraph 2007 and it was very impressive.  You could put your Windows Phone on the Surface, drag photos out of the phone and into the Surface, and make a little collage of sorts.

    Really neat demo, but I still have no idea who would buy one or what it’s for.

    • Brainspore

      …I still have no idea who would buy one or what it’s for.

      Dude, everybody with a Windows phone is gonna want one of these things! That’s a potential market of dozens of people right there. DOZENS.

  • voiceinthedistance

    No need to be snide, Brainspore.  We all know that they have sold at least a hundred Windows phones*.  Give them credit where credit is due.

    *Not counting returns, of course.

  • Jaron Hendrix

    So far, this is still one of the coolest applications for the Surface that I’ve seen, courtesy of some Carnegie Mellon students: Dungeons and Dragons.
    http://blogs.msdn.com/b/surface/archive/2009/10/19/dungeons-dragons-done-right-on-microsoft-surface.aspx