Robbie Bach on Microsoft Surface: "We don't want to be in the furniture business"

There's always an element of risk and uncertainty when stepping outside of the status quo. So it's no surprise that Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division (think: Xbox, Zune) and accused drunk thought more than once about killing off Microsoft's Surface. "I thought about killing it every year it was in development," he said. Robbie revealed that Surface (or project Milan as it was known) was in development for 5 years with a core team of 20 Microsoft employees developing the computer. Bill Gates himself was always a "big supporter." Regarding the size of the device, Bach quipped, "We don't want to be in the furniture business," as he looked forward to a more manageable consumer version in 2011. We guess that's a direct response to the wisecracking video spoof which chided, "one day your computer will be a big-ass table." Don't remember the video? No problem, we've embedded it for you after the break.

P.S. Surface is an Engadget fave, we kid the ones we love.