'CSI' sleuths out Microsoft's latest technology - Tablet PCs, UMPCs and Surface....

CSI-NY may have the advantage here with Tablet PCs, as they have been featured on the show all the last season...more details from last year here...and now the Miami show looks to have some "Surface" features included...all shows are slated to be paperless very soon...BD

The CSI franchise also plans to go all "paperless" as key characters are outfitted with Tablet PCs and Ultra-Mobile PCs. CSI creator Anthony E. Zuiker first saw Photosynth, which is due later this year, in July during a tour of Microsoft's research labs in Redmond, Wash.Zuiker makes regular visits to Redmond as part of an ongoing creative relationship between CSI and Microsoft.
No money is exchanged in the Microsoft-CSI relationship, which goes well beyond traditional product placement. "We are moving to a role of technology adviser to a show," says Jay Kenny, a group product manager for lifestyle marketing and placement at Microsoft. "It's a unique collaboration we hope to see more of in the future."

CSI has put other Microsoft technology into its scripts. The audiovisual lab in CSI: Miami was rebuilt to include layout tables based on Microsoft's Surface tabletop computers. Transparent video "walls" have also been employed. "If the technology is real and it has been used or it could be used, we would champion that and put it on the air immediately," Zuiker says.