Forget the tablet, meet the TABLE PC - a giant touchscreen that could replace your home computer (and your coffee table)

The modern homehas family members spread out over the house, each with a separate PC or tablet.

However, computer maker Lenovo has something it believes will get them back together: a PC the size of a coffee table that works like a gigantic tablet and lets four people use it at once. 

Chinese computer manufacturer Lenovo unveiled the novel piece of hardware at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Sunday. The 17.8-pound, 27-inch Windows 8 Pro machine, which is called the IdeaCenter Horizon Table PC, should be available ‘beginning in early summer’ at a starting price of 1,298.33€ the company said.

‘Horizon makes personal computing interpersonal computing with shared, collaborative experiences among several people,’ said Peter Hortensius, president of Lenovo's product group, in a company press release.

‘Now many people can enjoy different photos, music and video on the same screen, and they can play games with our special accessories that blend physical and digital interaction’ he said.

The Horizon Table PC takes advantage of Windows 8's touch-based features to support multiplayer gaming among other activities.

The Table PC will include plastic 'strikers' for 'Air Hockey,' and joysticks that attach to the screen with suction cups for other games, including multiplayer shooter 'Raiding Company'.

It even comes with a virtual electronic dice so that board games can still be played. It runs NVIDIA GeForce graphics as well as ‘heart-pounding’ Dolby Home Theater v4 audio, Hortensius said.

The computer can transform into a 27-inch desktop for those who want to use it for solitary purposes.

There is one trade-off for all of those features.

The Horizon Table PC contains only two hours of battery life when not connected to a wall-socket. 

Lenvo is also getting ready to market a Horizon Multimode Table that will let users change the angle and height of the PC from lying down flat to facing the user like a normal monitor.

Hortensius said Lenovo is also getting ready to launch new editions of more traditional computers, including new IdeaPad and ThinkPad touchscreen Windows 8 notebooks. Microsoft Corp. pioneered the idea of a table PC with the Surface, a PC with a 30-inch (762-millimeter) touch-sensitive screen released in 2008. 

It was designed for store displays and other commercial applications. 

The concept is now called PixelSense, as Microsoft started using the 'Surface' name for an unrelated tablet computer last year. 

More recently, Sony Corp. released the Tap 20, an all-in-one PC that can also be laid flat. 

But it is smaller than the Lenovo model, at 20 inches (508 millimeters) diagonally, and doesn't have as much table-oriented software as the Table PC.