Microsoft Surface vs Windows Touch?

Question

What is the difference between Microsoft surface 2.0
and Windows touch events in .Net 4.0 ?
Are the two platforms parallel or is one built on top of the other ?

Windows touch events and surface touch events are not the same events ?
Help, I'm confused.

Answer 1

Microsoft Surface is a product http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en/us/whatissurface.aspx

Windows Touch is the ability of the Windows operatings system to listen to touch events http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/touch

WPF has the ability to handle touch events http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms754010.aspx

So if you have hardware that supports touch running a version of windows that supports touch, you can run a WPF app that handles touch events. (A bit of a simplification but that is the basic idea)

Answer 2

As I understand it, the 'Surface' platform is built on top of touch events. For example, You can code standard WPF components for Touch interaction yourself, as a subset of the usual .NET components support touch events. Or, you can use the Surface controls instead which generally have done alot of the work for you in handling interactions like dragging, pinching, and so on.

Touch is a tricky mechanism to get right from a user POV, so I'd say start with the already available Surface library if you want to get started in this area.