Microsoft: Surface hub will ship from January 1, 2016

Fondle-giant to lumber out of Oregon at last

Microsoft has quietly announced when its Surface Hub will ship, and if you're impatient, you won't be pleased: it won't be until January 1, 2016.

In July, it emerged that manufacturing problems were going to delay the planned September 1 ship date of the product.

Redmond has now updated its “we're running late” blog post with the bare information about the ship date.

The wall-mounted too-big-to-fondleslabs are being built in Oregon, and Microsoft originally said pre-orders meant it was going to have to scale up its manufacturing plans.

The fondlewalls are Microsoft's attempt to carve a chunk out of Cisco's collaboration business, with 55” and 80” units that can bring the true horror of any PowerPoint presentation to enormous life.

As well as the Universal Apps that also run on PCs and Windows phones, Microsoft wants developers to create large-screen apps for the Surface Hub.

Vulture South beheld a Surface Hub at Microsoft's Sydney outpost last week and while it's a cleverly-designed computer and performed impeccably during a presentation. it occupies a huge amount of space. Exposed and sharp-ish steel edges on its supporting stand would doubtless see health and safety officers' brows furrowing. If Redmond can knock off those literal rough edges, there's no reason the Surface Hub won't see others inside a business smile. ®