”.NET Rocks” talks with Robert Levy and Doug Kramer just after they Surface session on PDC.
http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=389

Finally some confirmation of the 5 cameras.

ok, I was wrong, there is 5 cameras

probable placement?

Nice! Thanks for the link.

Very interesting, I watched the talk too.  I have to say I was very impressed with the honesty of the interviewees, they didn’t push the truth anywhere it seems.  But, I also have to say I still see no reason for the cost considering what people are doing on this group.  It’s an incredibly costly piece of kit and with only a 30” screen at 1024x768 it’s already out of date.

One thing I found very interesting was the discussion of the 360 degree interface problems, which some of you may know is my baby right now.  I’ve been putting heavy thought and experimentation into it and have found some interesting things.  I’m in the middle of writing my layout guide for NUI which I’ll post when it’s ready.  Designing for NUI is very different to design for screen, it’s caught me out every day for the last 3-4 months.

Yeah i agree, I thought they were pretty open about things.

I think their price range is exactly where it should be since the people they’re targeting can easily afford it. Eventually it’ll come down in price, but right now I think they’ve established a good price for their audience (which isn’t the average consumer). You can’t really compare it to what we’re doing. I mean, they have a custom beamer of some kind, some custom diffuser layer he mentioned, 5 cameras all running at 60fps, sturdy hardware, waterproof, etc.  Those are things you can’t really say most of us are doing (yet). Then you have to consider the markup so they can actually make some money. Keep in mind Han’s wall is $100,000 and many MT installations are running in the same price range (gesturtek is selling tables in the $30,000 range). Just my .5 cents

One of the better interviews of surface I thought.

Glad you guys liked the interview - the .NET Rocks guys did a fabulous job of asking the right questions (and locking us in a room far away from marketing people!)

As for costs, there is a 10% discount on developer units ($13,500) running through November 14th.  Order forms are on surface.com

Also, that $15K price is for developer units that come with things like 5 SDK licenses, invites to our hands-on-training class in Redmond, access to developer support forums, etc.  For commercial units being deployed in bulk, the price drops to $12,500.

-Robert

Thanks for post rlevy [msft]