Redmond has been trying to make hardware a bit more of a priority lately and been making some good calls with its Surface Pro line of tablets and Surface Book laptop. However word on the street is that these are just the tip of Redmond’s PC iceburg and it is going push its own desktops.

To be fair, it is not an ordinary desktop, it is one of those new-fangled all-in-ones which analysts thick could be the next big thing. Dubbed the Surface AIO it will be part of Microsoft’s Surface range.

This is not the first time we have heard rumours. Digitimes mentioned that Microsoft would introduce a Surface desktop PC “in the third quarter of 2016 at the earliest” and we didn’t bother reporting it because we thought it unlikely [sorry Digitimes].

The three-in-one will be based around Chipzilla’s Kaby Lake 14-nanometer processors so much depends on when Intel can get them to Microsoft.

Still putting such an item on the market when the PC industry is still in its free fall of doom is very brave of Microsoft. And the outfit could actually do its bit to save the industry if it does that one thing that the likes of Apple have failed to do – give the punters something new.

If Surface AIO is an updated, consumer-level version of the PixelSense, the company’s attempt at a touch-centric tabletop computing device it would be just that. In fact anything but a grey box and Microsoft could be onto a winner.