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Microsoft's Surface Hub 2S Starts at $8,999, Ships in June (venturebeat.com)

Posted by msmash on from the for-what-it-is-worth dept.

The Surface Hub, Microsoft's digital whiteboard designed for conferences and meetings, received a hardware refresh today. From a report: At a press event at Steelcase's swanky New York City hub, the Redmond, Washington company detailed the improved Surface Hub 2S, which boasts a touchscreen that's higher in resolution than the original, plus a 4K front camera that supports video calling, an enhanced 8-microphone far-field microphone array, and other improvements. Surface 2S will ship in June, starting at $8,999 and going up to nearly $12,000. (That's the same base price as the original Surface Hub 2.) A larger version -- the Surface Hub 2S 85-inch -- will also be available at an as-yet-unrevealed price, and stands and wall mounts from Steelcase will be sold separately for $1,449.99 and $249, respectively.

44 comments

  1. Surface Table by Luthair · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've always been disappointed that they stopped producing the original Surface tables, ever since I saw the MIT demo of D&D on one it always seemed like they'd be used for very cool stuff if they were available on the used market.

    1. Re:Surface Table by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A lot of demo's products while look cool and are seen favorably never make it to the market because there is the issue of getting critical mass from it.
      While I am sure some people would pay 8k for a D&D table, I doubt it will be enough to justify the build and marketing for it. But also there is a lot of Science Fiction Computer UI while many technically possible, are just impractical in real life. For example the Transparent Display It looks good in the movies, but it is so the Camera Man can see the Actors head and the data they are looking at the same time. In real life you are going to be sure you place that display in the right spot, otherwise you background is going to clash with what you are trying to read.

      You can probably just mount your Surface Hub horizontally on a table if you want that specialist configuration.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    2. Re:Surface Table by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While none of what you said is wrong, there are still plenty of people around that remember what the early days of personal computers was like. There was no real market for that either, and it wasn't a giant company making them.

      I've seen a few projects documented online where people make their own touch tables, often with a projector inside the table doing a rear projection on the underside of the table, and hacked together multipoint touch recognition. Maybe there's no market for Microsoft to put out a surface table for ~$10,000, but I'm amazed there isn't a small to mid-sized company building cheap implementations for use in living rooms and such as a coffee table or kitchen table or something. You can build one from brand new off the shell parts for less than a grand, and I bet you could lower that quite a bit if you have some parts done overseas. Add a healthy 50% markup, and that seems like it would have some potential.

      Ditto on digital whiteboards... I've seen numerous example of DIY versions that don't have the polish of the pro versions, and super expensive ones, but where's the middle ground?

    3. Re:Surface Table by badboy_tw2002 · · Score: 1

      No time like the present to get started! You seem very sure of yourself, let me know when I can order one!

    4. Re:Surface Table by Luthair · · Score: 1

      That is why I specified "available on the used market", obviously the original retail price ($11k) was far out of a reasonable range of individuals :)

      I have heard that they had some success in some restaurants or casinos. In an alternate reality where this were popular in commercial settings and we saw successive generations then tinkerers might be able to pick these up on ebay.

    5. Re:Surface Table by Luthair · · Score: 1

      I looked earlier and there seem to be quite a few tables on alibaba (mostly android) but sadly none are available on aliexpress. Even if there were as an individual you'd need to write the software that went viral to spark a community unfortunately.

    6. Re:Surface Table by darkain · · Score: 1

      The Surface Table actually did make it to market though. The Sheraton Hotel in Downtown Seattle had a couple in their lobby years ago. If I was in the area, I'd stop by just to play around with the tables.

    7. Re:Surface Table by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah. We bought some digital whiteboards/TVs whatever at my company. For some reason, I think almost nobody used them for what they were bought for... only used as a monitor in meetings. It was too inconvenient to get up in front of everybody and try to draw on the screen that was too big. If you go with this smaller design, now your meetings are limited to 4 people.

    8. Re:Surface Table by jacks+smirking+reven · · Score: 1

      Surface table was cool but once large multi-touch systems became somewhat easy to buy and make there wasnt really a need for it. As i recall that table used a slick but complicated optical system for touch, now you can do it easy with a PCAP or IR based touch frame. You can buy them for any LCD and put it on a table and get the same effect.

      This company makes some really nice ones.

      https://ideum.com/

    9. Re:Surface Table by Locke2005 · · Score: 1

      The target market for Surface Hub is businesses that can afford $10K-$20K for a fancy videoconferencing setup in their conference rooms. The target market for Surface Table is... douchebags that can afford to spend $10K to impress friend they invite to parties? That's not really a big enough market to justify the ongoing support costs, is it?

      --
      I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    10. Re: Surface Table by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      $10k is still cheaper than a loaded imac pro....

    11. Re: Surface Table by Locke2005 · · Score: 1

      Aren't most of those also bought by content-production businesses?

      --
      I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    12. Re:Surface Table by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I used to work at an agency that got one to play around with.

      You could do some neat things with it. We did a doodle app that would allow four people to stand around it and each person having their own color and all being able to draw at the same time - we'd know what color to draw because you could work out which side of the screen the touch was coming from as you'd get a "heat map" for touches - the screen was a giant infra-red sensor.

      But because of the way the screen sensor worked, we found by accident that it wouldn't work reliably in areas exposed to sunlight - we had the table in a room with west facing windows and in the late afternoon the sun would shine through and onto the table and it would throw garbage data at us and not respond to touches. It wasn't an issue until the angle of the sun changed with the season to shine directly on it.

      We pitched some concepts of utilising it in a retail showroom to some clients, but nobody was interested as the iPad was the new hotness.

    13. Re:Surface Table by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, so why aren't we playing D&D on these things? I'd buy one for a thousand if the software worked well. And even if it didn't - I bet an OSS group would whip up something good. I'd help. Many others would as well. Is there no one in China who would make money from types like me?

    14. Re:Surface Table by Luthair · · Score: 1

      Try again. The tables were also sold to businesses (hotels, restaurants, casinos) but Microsoft gave some to MIT and other schools to see what people would do with them. If the tech had been more successful then as these businesses upgraded there would have been a trickle down cycle on the used market and tinkerers could have gotten their hands on them and done cool shit. (which is what I said in my post).

  2. Someone Please Reboot the Whiteboard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Nine grand to take notes. AI isn't he danger, managers are.

    1. Re:Someone Please Reboot the Whiteboard by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      It is the customers who pay for it. Businesses especially in areas that are customer facing. Will spend a lot of money on mostly useless luxury items. That Gold Plated Logo that is 5 feet wide, on a wall with expensive fabric wall paper, Plush leather chairs, in a solid wood conference table. All to tell the customers that they are a company that is successful, and is setup to offer long term service, and isn't a fly by night operation.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    2. Re:Someone Please Reboot the Whiteboard by PPH · · Score: 3, Informative

      Oblig. Dilbert

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    3. Re: Someone Please Reboot the Whiteboard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What it tells most of us is they are reckless with their money and can't be trusted. Or at least, that's what it should say about them.

    4. Re: Someone Please Reboot the Whiteboard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Today I learned that remote collaboration is useless to slashdot readers.

    5. Re: Someone Please Reboot the Whiteboard by gravewax · · Score: 1

      most Slashdot readers have zero idea about the requirements of working in a large enterprise. They can't comprehend that even at 10k these are actually relatively cheaper for a video conference room.

  3. Finally! The year of the Desktop Computer! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe we'll soon get around to the Personal Computer.

  4. All those business cases by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I just want to use it to play a big game of telepresence D&D.

    1. Re: All those business cases by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      I used to game on huge Mitsubishi MegaView CRT's that I found on eBay for pennies on the dollar. Wait ~12 years and you might just get your chance.

    2. Re: All those business cases by Type44Q · · Score: 0
      Can't even make an "orange idiot" joke without pissing off some wannabe "conservative" who's apparently determined to act just like an intellectually-underequipped and oversensitive liberal.

      What's an objective independent to do except tell 'em all to suck a dick. ;)

  5. Am I reading it wrong? by MisterMoney · · Score: 2

    Unless I'm misreading the article (and there's every possibility I am), the $9K price tag is for a 50.5 inch version and the 85 inch version doesn't actually have a price point yet.

    1. Re: Am I reading it wrong? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nope. You're not wrong. We don't even ready the fucking summary anymore, we just write a title, hit submit, and get back to eating cheetos and masturbating.

      It's a living.

    2. Re: Am I reading it wrong? by PPH · · Score: 2

      get back to eating cheetos and masturbating

      Don't forget that 4K front camera.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
  6. Has anyone used these? by doubledown00 · · Score: 1

    Are they worth the investment? Or perhaps wait for something that can do 3D space like a hologram projector? Or perhaps enhanced reality glasses?

    1. Re:Has anyone used these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or perhaps you can play Mahjongg solitaire on it.

    2. Re:Has anyone used these? by jacks+smirking+reven · · Score: 1

      It's nice if you actually use all the features, but if you end up just using it as a big display, then you really just overpaid. Its nice that it's all in one with a PC, cameras and speakers rather than a hodge-podge of equipment, but in my experience people who want "The Surface" really want that particular one for the prestige since they are hard to get rather then the many many equivalent corporate collaboration systems out there.

    3. Re:Has anyone used these? by Zehsi · · Score: 0

      it looks interesting. Ship it with ubuntu or android and I might be interested.

    4. Re: Has anyone used these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why would turning into an overpriced Linux box with lousy software make it interesting?

    5. Re: Has anyone used these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We use it a lot at my company. (At least the original surface hub)

    6. Re: Has anyone used these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because zeshi is too dim to figure out how to install Linux, apparently.

    7. Re:Has anyone used these? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's like buying a new car and plugging a lawn mower engine into. sure you could but why the fuck would you. nothing wrong with Linux or android but they would need heavy customisation for this use case.

  7. This sounds expensive for the hardware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is it me or couldn't you buy this sort of system in pieces a whole lot cheaper? But I guess there is a market for this sort of product at this price or Microsoft wouldn't bother.

    1. Re: This sounds expensive for the hardware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sure go ahead. And after youâ(TM)ve deployed 100 of these in various conference rooms that canâ(TM)t be monitored and your frankenshit solution starts having problems you will be on dice.com looking for work

    2. Re:This sounds expensive for the hardware by Kaenneth · · Score: 1

      No; Surface/Pixelsense uses a different type of screen; instead of just R/G/B output pixels, it has an IR sensor integrated into each pixel. The screen requires it's own production line, circuitry, cables, etc.

      So not just a huge screen with detection tacked on, it's a limited production run of huge electronically unique screens just for Microsoft.

    3. Re: This sounds expensive for the hardware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Couple optiplex 360s could do all the work, sell it on dice no problem

  8. IBM PC 64KB 1 floppy in 2019 dollars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    8,000.00 USD

    not even color

    i wrest your fast ass

    yes

    fast

  9. Good joke. The price. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Good joke. The price.

    It's not worth half of the money they want you to pay.

  10. Ridiculous! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I knew phones were getting bigger but 85-inches is completely useless. And what's up with the Applesque price tag?

    Think Different? Try thinking at all.

  11. It's a whiteboard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Share prices in Sharpie are holding steady.