The CEO of Microsoft uses an 80-inch touchscreen with Windows 8 for communications and productivity, . "He's got rid of his phone, he's got rid of his note paper," spokesman Frank Shaw said. "It's touch-enabled and it's hung on his wall."

An 80-inch Windows 8 touchscreen may sound like an exclusive luxury for Microsoft's boss, but Shaw said the company eventually plans to sell the device, though he wouldn't name the manufacturer, the price or a release date.

Microsoft lists 27 inches as the largest common screen size it expects for Windows 8 PCs, envisioning these large touchscreens as "family hub" devices. "Families might opt for an all-in-one desktop with a huge touch screen to view and organize all of the family photos," Microsoft senior program manager David Washington .

Much larger Windows 8 touchscreens would likely be aimed at commercial uses, at least at first. "It's not a consumer thing now, but we know historically that that's how all things start," Shaw told Wired UK. "The idea that there should be a screen that's not a computer, we'll laugh at that in two years."

Microsoft experimented with large touchscreens as tabletops when five years ago. Harrah's Entertainment offered video games on the tabletop touchscreen We about it for a few years, but apparently Ballmer found an application for the big touchscreen.