no matter what orientation you were looking
at the table.
Now this is my table, I bought this for myself
in my own office.
It's been used as you can tell.
These are 10 years old after all.
Mine's got a few scratches here and there
but it's in fully working order
and these are very rare to come by these days.
So I'm actually pretty chuffed with its current condition.
Now the Surface Table itself is, since it's 10 years old
is running an Intel Core 2 Duo with Windows Vista
but it's a modified version of Windows Vista.
It's not the Windows Vista that you're expecting.
Although there is there if you want it.
It actually boots into an entirely different shell,
it boots into something called the Surface shell
and when you boot it up, it looks just like this.
(jingle)
By the way, that fan you can hear is the Surface Table.
This is a loud device when on, so I wouldn't recommend
using one of these is say a quiet office or something.
So the main benefit of the table, apart from its UI
being usable from any angle.
It's the fact that it can also see not just fingers,
but objects.
So I can draw these ribbons here on the table
for example and then I can put a cup down
and the table will see the cup and actually react to it.
So you can see the ribbons are now surrounding the cup
and if I lift the cup up, the ribbons,
you'll see them spinning around
and then in a few seconds they will dissipate
and move on to their next sort of object,
which you can see, another one found the cup
and it's now spinning around it.
Now you can't do this on a normal capacitive touchscreen.
And yes, this isn't a capacitive touch screen.
This is a touchscreen device that is being used
in conjunction with IR sensors, cameras and a projector.
So this was one of the many benefits.
Another benefit was that back in 2008,
you could put your Windows Mobile 6.5 device
on it and the table would be able to see it
and read data off it, such as music, ringtones,
contacts and more.
Unfortunately since I don't have a Windows Mobile 6.5 device
and since you need to email Microsoft's own Surface
and email to get the app anyway, I don't believe
this app is actually in circulation anymore.
It does come with a few games
and again, since the UI is designed to be adaptable
from any angle, you can spin the thing,
you can turn it around, you can do all sorts with it.
You can resize it, so anybody at any angle can play
and interact.
So I'm playing Checkers here and it's pretty fun.
You can also turn on AI if you're lonely like me
and have nobody to play with
and the game will play for itself.
Now I want to talk more about the UI and how it's designed
to be accessible from any angle.
So as you can see here I'm using it
from the left-hand side of the screen
but I can also open the same UI from the other side
of the screen and the UI will adjust accordingly
to cater to whoever is using it.
So using it on the left-hand side,
if I press the button on the right-hand side
it will open the UI on the right-hand side.
And again, the goal of this UI was for it to be accessible
and usable from any angle by multiple people.
This is the music app and all of the elements
within the music app can be spun around and orientated
in any way you want.
So I'm obviously looking at it from this angle here
but you can look at it from another angle as well.
Speaking of music, the speakers built into the Surface Table
are actually pretty cool.
They sound amazing as you can see here
and the app that actually handles music
is really quite nice.
It can be a little bit slow and sometimes
the touchscreen itself is a little finicky
but the overall app itself is really quite
enjoyable to use.
And it's really cool as well to organize music
at a party on your table.
A lot of people look at that and go "Wow! That's actually
"really kind of cool."
(rock music)
And that's kind of the goal of the Surface Table.
It is really quite wow, and it's interesting
because this is a table that's 10 years old
yet this technology still isn't here today
in all of our homes.
It's unfortunate because I would love to have
an actual table that's updated with an active developer
community that were building apps for a UI
that could be accessible from any angle.
It's really quite great.
Now as you see here, I'm playing Chess with the AI
and it's been a while since I've played Chess
so I'm about to fail epically here.
But the games that it comes with, the sort of demo apps
are pretty amazing.
Look, I just lost my king, look at how pathetic that is.
I couldn't believe it, listen, "Wow, I did not
"see that one coming."
Now it's also worth noting that the Surface Tables
weren't ever aimed at the consumer market,
these were for the commercial market,
for businesses who'd be using these in retail spaces
such as stores, which is one of the reasons
why we aren't seeing them in homes today.
These weren't really aimed at homes at the beginning.
Now I'm pretty sure the end goal was to get these
into homes, however it's 2017
and we still don't have them here.
Now the reason we're not seeing these in homes just yet
is because Microsoft canceled the project in 2013,
shortly after releasing a version 2.0.
The product was remained to Microsoft PixelSense
after the Microsoft Surface tablets were launched,
but that didn't save it and Microsoft have since
not been working on this project anymore
which is a shame because I would really like
an updated table running Windows in my living room.
Unfortunately that doesn't appear to be the case just yet.
So it's easy to forget that this is a table
first and foremost.
When I first got the table in, I was afraid to put anything
onto it because I was worried I was going to break it.
But after a few days I kind of got used to the idea
of treating it like a normal table
because that's what it is first and foremost, a table.
So it can put up with table things,
such as putting objects on its surface.
I was afraid of doing that at first because I was worried