When Microsoft showed off a preview of the second generation of Surface, the multi-touch system designed for interactive and innovative computing experiences, many people were impressed. Where the original Surface hardware was an enormous and incredibly bulky piece of equipment, the new version was still large but much sleeker (reducing its overall profile to just four inches of thickness), bringing considerable technological improvements, as well as the ability to mount the display on a wall, in addition to the original ‘table-top’ configuration.

The Surface 2.0 hardware is actually a Samsung system known as the SUR40. It has a 40-inch 1080p display which can handle fifty simultaneous touch inputs, and is protected by the largest sheet of Gorilla Glass ever applied to a screen. The display uses Microsoft’s new PixelSense technology, which essentially infuses each pixel with both optical and infrared sensors that enable the screen to recognise fingers and other objects that interact with it without the use of cameras.