A hands-on experience with the Microsoft Surface

The demonstration unit I used was housed in an attractive glass table about three feet high, with a solid base that hides a fairly standard computer equipped with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, an AMI BIOS, 2 GB of RAM, and Windows Vista. The team lead would not divulge which graphics card was inside, but they said that it was a moderately-powerful graphics card from either AMD/ATI or NVIDIA.

The display screen is a 4:3 LCD display measuring approximately 30 inches diagonally. The screen resolution is a relatively modest 1024x768, but the touch detection system had an effective resolution of 1920x1440. Unlike the screen resolution, which for the time being is constant, the touch resolution varies according to the size of the screen used—it is designed to work at a resolution of 96 dots per inch. The top layer also works as a diffuser, making the display clearly visible at any angle..