Epson Develops a Rival to Microsoft Surface
Posted 04/20/09 at 04:38:49 PM by Andy Salisbury
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It looks like Microsoft’s Surface won’t be the only computer in the interactive touch-sensitive table market; Epson has recently announced their very own offering, the xDesk.
Aside from having an extremely cheesy name, the xDesk offers some pretty solid features for a machine of this caliber including a 52-inch, 1024x768 touch screen that can communicate with gadgets such as phones and cameras placed onto its surface, and the ability to recognize gesture recognition, allowing multiple users to drag around photos or draw. It’ll also transfer audio and video wirelessly though Bluetooth 2.1, but if you’d rather go the wired route and use FireWire or one of the five USB 2.0 ports, that works fine too.
Underneath the hood you’ll find a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of DDR2 memory, a 250GB HDD and an ATI HD 4850 GPU. Though, as for pricing and availability, there’s still no word.
Also, if you’d like to see a video if it in action, be sure to click here.
Image Credit: Epson
I think this is far from
Submitted by Saltboy on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 4:51am
I think this is far from being ready to be your desk. I like to do other things on my desk that would be interpreted as input, ie writing.
This would be awesome as a coffee table in the living room. This would a great multimedia machine where I can get all my news, weather, movie times, entertain guests, mess with photo albums, home movies, queue up a movie on my server to play on the tv, manage home security, etc.
In that case then I want a
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 5:40pm
In that case then I want a Holoprojector to project an image or video from eith the center of the desk or the middle front edge of the desk table. That would be cool for displaying video and conferencing and bringing a whole new way of browsing porn to the living room.
So That's it, all surface computers need to have a holoprojector. That is just a requirement.
Submitted by neo1piv14 on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 3:55am
1024x768 resolution? 1 gig of RAM? Not quite a dream machine, but I guess it's cool to see what I could do with some seriously out dated hardware and a projector. I guess there might be some innovation if more people jump into the "touch table" arena, but I just don't see myself playing SupCom on one - as awesome as that would be.
Submitted by KaylaKaze on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 5:22pm
I'm most interested in these as gaming tables, especially ones that can read barcodes off of an item's bottom. You can barcode your minis and it could display character sheets and whatnot.
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 5:36pm
Like virtual craps? Or virtual vibration football? That is an idea. Why hasn't anyone made a Vibration football game simulator?
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 2:01pm
It needs a quad core. It needs more memory, alot more memory. It needs a bigger hdd.
Setup that is outlined in the article is just fine for commercial use in Stores and the like but for Home Use then it needs more of everything. But I suspect that these surface computers aren't really being targeted at home users but it's a great idea.
Suppose the Surface could be used as a real desktop the Surface of the Surface display needs to be strong and capable of withstanding abuse like writing on paper on the surface with a pen pushing hard and not damaging the display. The Surface needs to be rigid and not flexable. It needs to be scratch resistant and spill proof. I spill a whole cup of coffee on the surface computer I should be able to simply wipe it up and everything will still be fine. The display needs to be truely scratch resistant and high contrast to remain visible with window shades open so the sun doesn't white out the display.
Surface Desk computers could and should replace standard desks in the near future. Your next desk should be a computer. And you can still have your gaming computer there with the display sitting on the desk or something like that. This can only be cool. Heck you can have your Gaming LCD attached to the forward edge of the surface desk in front of the user sitting posistion with the gaming computer tower on the floor next to the surface desk with the surface computer integrated into the desk. Both computers can be networked together.
This is awesome.
if they take it farther in
Submitted by bingojubes on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 4:20pm
if they take it farther in the future, and give it more, it should also come with a higher resolution for the 4:3 aspect ratio. maybe even a widescreen version, as well.
kind of looks like the one MaxPC built. MaxPC shuld get mad props for that project.
also, house of the dead for PC should be real fun on that deskPC. or tetris.
Submitted by dracoman08 on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 1:44pm
if i had the money, i would buy one just because i've always wanted a big touch screen but dont feel like building one.
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