Surface: Beauty’s Only Skin Deep… if that

Surface, schmurface: I wanna coffee table I can put my coffee cup (and cake and magazines and feet–not all at once, of course :-)) on.

Lotsa buzz recently about Microsoft’s new foray into paradigm breaking. *yawn* As has happened so frequently, when Me$$y$oft gets into the breaking-the-mold mode, they’ve come up with a real dog of an idea: Microsoft’s new touch screen coffee table/computer called “Surface” that has some serious problems from the git go.

Anyone else see the obvious problem? Right. How many folks hunch over their coffee table that way? Maybe for a short time, but not for long. Would you be willing to sit uncomfortably for enough hours reaching awkwardly around on a coffee table sized computer touch screen to make it worth the bucks, when using a remote (or even wireless keyboard/mouse) to manipulate data on a media center PC hooked up to a nice flat screen TV while sitting back in your chair would be easier and more comfortable… and likely cost less to boot? Less? “With a price tag between $5,000 and $10,000 per unit… ” Yeh, a LOT less. You could buy one HUGE honker of a flat screen and throw in a nice media comp for those kindsa bucks.

Neat idea, Me$$y$oft, really neat, but dumb. Even if placed as a desktop replacement, the ergonomics would be a bomb. Just think it through and do a few hand-tapping exercises on a comparable area on your desk. As a concept, it’s perhaps better than Microsoft Bob (although Bob at least had the virtue of recognizing that the “new breed” of computer users coming up at the time were totally clueless), though by how much I’d be hard pressed to venture at this point.

Of course, customer use in hotels, restaurants and other commercial establishments to make interfacing with databases, placing orders, getting more information on products (the things will be able to read bar codes) makes some sense and will probably be the backbone of Me$$y$oft’s customer base for the product. But the only consumers who’ll waste their money on such a thing are folks who have money to waste and little sense about how they waste it (goes without saying, of course: they’re wasting it. *heh*)

In the real world of real people, coffee tables are to put stuff on, Me$$y$oft. Maybe use for the occasional board game or some such. Prop one’s feet on. You get the drift. Trying to make it into a surface for touch screen computing is… well, it’s not going to take the world by storm.

Another yawner from the folks who thrust Vista–which, BTW, is the OS for this gold-plated iteration of the Microsoft Bob mentality–down the throats of computer users.

Trackposted to Pet’s Garden Blog, Perri Nelson’s Website, stikNstein… has no mercy, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, The Amboy Times, Leaning Straight Up, Conservative Cat, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.