Also, it states that it only costs “hundreds of dollars”. But if you re-read it, you’ll see that it’s “hundreds of dollars” to produce it, not to buy it. If it costs $500 to produce, you know they won’t sell it for less than $2000. And I don’t understand why M$ would bother to “design” something like this and not market it. Doesn’t make sense to me.

As for the projector shadowing, if you have a ceiling mounted projector (as many school classrooms and business conference rooms do), then the shadow is minimized. Your hand will still cast a shadow as you’re using the board, but it’ll only be the size of your hand, which is the same amount of area already blocked by… your hand. So it doesn’t really matter too much. Having a projector on a table and doing this would produce the full body shadowing that you’re complaining about.

Somebody above was interested in using a tablet to control the screen instead of a mouse, these too already exist. I was looking at one called an InterWrite just the other day. $400 (school cost) each. You can have up to 7 connected to a system so your coworkers/students can participate as well.

You are correct in pointing out the facets of this setup are ‘fun’ but are not going to create a desire for this as a must-have product. The concept may be useful in other arenas such as an interactive information board accessible to visitors in a museum, but it’s not a satisfactory technique for presentations.

Your OHP idea sounds spot on. Get yourself a tablet PC and hook it up to a projector. Job done.

As a former teacher I could have used something like this in my classroom but ultimately it would have been very tiring by day’s end. Using a laptop, projector or surface like the old overhead projector is easier as short, quick movements translator into larger effects that an entire class can see without the teacher getting in the way. Some sort of confluence of the two using both technologies would be ideal for teaching.

Why? Because of all the sh*t heads that have patented touch stuff. It’s stifled innovation so that all the people with enough guts to build products have to work around the patents. The industry is at a stand-still in many ways. The other day, MS exemplified it perfectly by stating the low-end laptop requirements for XP one was which it couldn’t be a touchscreen. Not because of capability, but because of stifling innovation.

Johnny Lee’s wiimote is multi-touch if you have multi stylus’s created.

I want a 52inch LCD with a touch screen that I can use as a coffee table, drafting table, that also will fold vertical to a TV against the wall. Somebody probably patented it, won’t build it and is ruining it for everyone. Certain parts of corporations pretty kill innovation. MS is definitely one of them.

Anyway, this technology will become definitively interesting if its final price is available to all customers, that is, far cheaper than what they plan for Surface.

We are waiting for it:) this is the end of math - M$ + Poolicz.pl = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhCt4uTmoRI