TechRadar reports on what sounds like a really cool demo that their friends at PC Plus got to see at Microsoft's Reading campus in the UK. MS setup an HP IQ850 with Windows 7 and showed some converted Surface apps to show off what Windows 7 can do.

First off, if you've got a PC screen that supports multitouch, there are some things in Windows 7 that are already working well, although driver support for the screens is occasionally flaky. Gestures are up and running in Internet Explorer 8, so you can move backwards and forwards through the page history just by swiping the screen. Pinch zooming is fast too. Then there's Windows Live Photo Gallery, which has gesture support for rotating and zooming images. Cropping an area just makes sense when you do it with your fingertips.
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Using it, we're reminded of the demo from January's CES in which Steve Ballmer showed a vision of the future where our documents and images are populated with layered information pulled from websites, email databases, IM messages and academic resources, all made relevant by search algorithms.

It genuinely feels like Surface Globe is nine tenths of the way to fulilling this vision. All the app needs to get the rest of the way is a couple of good plug-ins to make it customisable, allowing users to create personalised maps to lag up friends' houses, places of work, the local hairdresser or previous and future holiday destinations.