Microsoft Corp. is set to officially release the “Surface”, a coffee-table shaped computer that responds to touch and to special bar codes attached to everyday objects. Kind of like Minority Report, but with a reduced chance of the photos merging to reveal personal visions of yourself murdering anyone.

Microsoft Surface Computer The machines, which Microsoft planned to debut Wednesday at a technology conference in Carlsbad, Calif., are set to arrive in November in T-Mobile USA stores and properties owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. and Harrah’s Entertainment Inc.

Surface is essentially a Windows Vista PC tucked inside a shiny black table base, topped with a 30-inch touchscreen in a clear acrylic frame. Five cameras that can sense nearby objects are mounted beneath the screen. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by setting real-world items tagged with special bar-code labels on top of it.

With a price tag between $5,000 and $10,000 per unit, Microsoft isn’t currently marketing the device to the family crowd, but will instead focus on the corporate workplace where the demand for push and slide photo-technology is, most likely, staggeringly high.