Julianne Pepitone for CNN Money:

The original Microsoft Surface, unveiled in 2007, was a 30-inch touchscreen tabletop. That device popped up in hotels and bars, and it let users interact with both digital items and physical objects through the use of infrared cameras.

With the Monday debut of the Surface tablet, though, the original tabletop product has been renamed “PixelSense.” That was already Microsoft’s name for the underlying technology that helps power the tabletop product.

I’m not sure why Microsoft thought it was better to recycle the “Surface” brand as the name for the new tablet instead of creating a new brand out of whole cloth. But that’s Microsoft for you.