Hands-on with Savant's $35000 ROSIE Coffee Table

Savant's ROSIE Coffee Table seemed like it would be a mighty fine addition to any geek's den, and after seeing one in person, our hunch has been substantiated. The table was on display and constantly surrounded by onlookers today at CEDIA, but we managed to squeeze through the crowd and snag a few pics of the device in action. We'll be the first to say that the resolution on the screen could certainly be improved, and the touch response seemed quirky as well, but the table in Denver will reportedly be tweaked a bit more before being loosed on the public. Speaking of which, we were able to step aside with a Savant employee in order to learn a bit more about this forthcoming unit, so here's the skinny...

Apparently, nailing down a spill-proof top is the final (major) hurdle standing in the way of a release, and the company hopes to have this bad boy ready for shipment by October / November. Moreover, the system within will indeed be based around OS X, play nice with other ROSIE equipment, and will purportedly tout an Intel processor, 500GB of internal storage, 2GB - 4GB of RAM, and no user-accessible optical drive. Lastly, we were informed that the ROSIE Coffee Table will ring up at a staggering $35,000 MSRP, so it's fairly safe to say that only the affluent will be seriously considering this one for their own domicile.

Gallery: Hands-on with Savant's ROSIE Coffee Table

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[humpty @ Sep 8th 2007 8:38AM]

Why would you spend 35k on a non-uprgadeable PC-table that will be obsolete in 4 months?

[manitou @ Sep 8th 2007 9:30AM]

Why would you every spend money on any tech stuff? Most "gadgets" are usally obsolete after existing for a much shorter time than your lifespan. ;)

[E71 @ Sep 8th 2007 1:45PM]

You would have thought after spending 35k on this crap, you'd get a better looking GUI.

[Count Chocula @ Sep 8th 2007 10:18PM]

Kramer from Steinfeld should sue over this idea.

[Sterling @ Sep 8th 2007 8:47AM]

I wonder how much of the $35k is going to Apple just so it will "be based around OS X". If they can get a somewhat legal port to a coffee table, why can't I get one (legally) for my custom box or non-Apple laptop?

[stranger @ Sep 8th 2007 8:57AM]

computer? touch screen? os based? sounds like Microsoft's Surface.

[Yojimbo @ Sep 8th 2007 12:33PM]

This was in dev far before MS Surface. MS Surface is a bit different in how it works as well... it uses CAMERAS not much direct TOUCH surface going on. These guys have been working on this for a good long while.

[roach @ Sep 8th 2007 12:53PM]

Surface has been in development since 2001.
Read: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

Where's your proof?

[Arjy @ Sep 8th 2007 9:02AM]

It's a big ass table.

[NeoK182 @ Sep 8th 2007 9:10AM]

so the only competition that MS Surface has costs 7 times as much as surface does. yea i'll wait the extra year until MS gets Surface out to the public for $5000 or less like they said.

[L @ Sep 8th 2007 9:17AM]

Yeah, and not to mention that the Surface table looks better and probably works nice too...

[NeoK182 @ Sep 8th 2007 9:20AM]

well i love MS but because it is from them it wouldn't surprise me if surface has a few bugs. but it looks great has hundreds of functions and is butt load cheaper. so i'll deal with some bugs to save $30,000

[stranger @ Sep 8th 2007 10:59AM]

according to wiki, Microsoft said it expects prices to drop enough to make consumer versions feasible in 3 to 5 years.

[FireFox @ Sep 8th 2007 9:12AM]

I guess a good carpenter could make that to ..

[Krocak @ Sep 8th 2007 9:36AM]

this thing is cool!!!!

[Patrick @ Sep 8th 2007 10:03AM]

These computer tables are lame & nerdy

[rob @ Sep 8th 2007 10:06AM]

can this be done much cheaper as a do-it-yourself project?

[Sterling @ Sep 10th 2007 2:55PM]

Yeah, I made a table about 6 months ago for $1,500.

It doesn't have the fancy software front end, just straight up OSX.... But its useful as an itunes control... and for some games, and surfing the web, etc.

Hmm, I should probably post photos of that thing sometime.

[-_- @ Sep 8th 2007 11:13AM]

But can it play Doom?

[Alexander @ Sep 8th 2007 11:17AM]

imagine some HOT COFFEE on this table

[sselemit @ Sep 8th 2007 11:21AM]

The User Interface sucks big. ...

[Bayard Michael @ Sep 8th 2007 12:03PM]

uhm, it doesn't play foosball, does it? Cause then I don't know what the hell it would be good for.
So your going to pay 35 large for a computer you have to network to another computer so you can input media... and then get a bad back leaning over the thing so you can use it, and it has an interface reduced to a a few lousy controls?
So, bottom line, you spend 10x a regular full boat mac to get a shittty version.
Nice.

[Dave @ Sep 8th 2007 12:38PM]

So it's priced higher than Microsoft's surface--but it doesn't have any visual recognition capability? The cool thing about Microsoft's surface was that it had three embedded cameras for identifying and scanning items you place on the surface. This thing is just a computer in a table.

[roach @ Sep 8th 2007 12:56PM]

This thing looks like grandma's version MS Surface

[John Van Naarden @ Sep 8th 2007 12:59PM]

Looks like they're playing Risk or something similar.

[Brandon @ Sep 8th 2007 1:34PM]

You know, taking that many pictures of a single Rosie really stops being useful- One or two will get you plenty of Research points.

[Bill @ Sep 8th 2007 7:59PM]

But surface is a myth. It can only recopgnize compatible gadgets, which is probably only one, the future Zune. It can scan anything it wants, but can only recognize gadgets with compatible embedded chips/ID. How much will you have to spend to get upgrade [buy new] all your gadgets so it will recognize them.... a lot. But then again, it would be a lot less than $35,000. It won't be no iPhone, that's for sure!

[dan @ Sep 9th 2007 5:17AM]

@Bill: Surface isn't a myth... it's been publically demoed many times now. It'll be in stores and hotels in winter.

It can also recognize... anything. The way it recognized the Zune and the camera and everything else in the demos was the "domino tags" put on the bottom of the devices, not the devices themselves. Yes they have to have wifi and drivers to do any kind of wireless synching, but you can have the Surface interact with anything (like how they showed it responding to putting down a glass on top). The tags are just IR ink printed stickers, called "domino tags" because the patterns printed to encode what the item is look kind of like domino dots.

[Bill @ Sep 9th 2007 8:01AM]

Thanks for the explanation Dan. I love my Mac Pro Tower, but I am no fanboy. Both table computers seem interesting, but the ID features of surface are of limited use and the WiFI link could be accomplished on either with appropriate hardware and software on both ends. Bluetooth could possible be and option as well. Coffee table computing would be cool in the Family room, especially if the entertainment center was involved, Both Apple/OS X and MS have this technology and could almost certainly implement it. Surface looks prettier, but both are sort of beta right now. However, surface was quote at $5,000 to 10,000, not starting at $10K. That's a lot more table or other hardware accessories than the $35K price tag for the OS X product.

[randy @ Sep 9th 2007 1:28AM]

"Rentals"? Um, you download a movie, you OWN it.

[dan @ Sep 9th 2007 5:17AM]

@randy: You mean, if you take home a DVD you rented at Blockbuster you own that too?

[Bill @ Sep 9th 2007 9:55AM]

Since we cannot edit or post, by saying that Surface is a myth, I meant that almost all of the demoed capabilities cannot be performed. You cannot use your credit card as they show and no camera today will download pictures, let you edit them etc...The many things it is shown to do is stated that '...in the future,...' and most of it is a 'simulation'. That's the fact jack. It may work with the Zune, or a couple of cell phones [which I would like to see a live demo], but where is the list of compatible peripherals? They just do not exit. Hence it called it a myth, although I know that they exist, they just do not function as shown on 'simulation'. But they look a hell of a lot better than that ugly ROSIE table. I would rather by a laptop, car, plasma TV and furniture.

[Jeff @ Sep 10th 2007 2:04PM]

I played with it at CEDIA and it was utter crap. The interface is ugly as sin, it doesn't have multi-touch (sales guy: "uh...it has quasi-multi-touch, like, if you touch it, you can still touch it somewhere else"), it's slow, and basically all it does is act as a big coffee table-sized remote control.

Basically it just runs off of a Mac that's stored somewhere else in your house. Apparently you can connect up to eight devices to one Mac. I'm not sure how that works physically, maybe some kind of breakout box.

But yeah, it looked more like some kind of OSS project than a retail product. I was really disappointed.