Do We Really Need Touch On Laptops?

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Status
Not open for further replies.
What a silly article. Sales for "touch" laptops are going down because laptops are being replaced by convertibles. This has nothing to do with the value of a touch screen. Touch devices are being replaced by touch devices.

Pointing out low cost non-touch laptops is a non-starter. This category didn't exist until Microsoft starting offering Windows with Bing for free, and competes with entertainment tablets (e.g. Nexus 7) and ChromeBooks, not laptops.

Keyboard and mouse will always be king, but many mobile users don't have/use a mouse.

Mouse pad and touch screens both have their pros and cons. Mouse pads are precise with good visibility but slow. Touch screens are the opposite: chunky, but fast and intuitive. There is poor support for touch in Windows OS and software; this detractor isn't inherent to the use scenario and can be resolved with clever UI design.

I occasionally use the touch screen for web scrolling and swipe gestures on my convertible even though it has an excellent keyboard dock and wireless USB mouse. Removing touch would be a detriment to my experience.

As long as touch screens continue to be incrementally cheaper and have some advantage (in spite of disadvantages) over other forms of pointing input, they will continue to be present on computing devices.
 
Touch on a laptop was the dumbest thing ever. Why would I reach all the way over to my screen and make it dirty when all I need to do is touch my mousepad?
 
We don't *need* touchscreen laptops. We don't *need* backlit keyboards either, or amoled displays or a freaking start menu... But for those who want them, why not have them?
 
There are applications for touch in graphics arts with touch with or without pens for the few of us that even use the things, but for most people, as shogunofharlom alludes to, why would I deal with the process of moving my whole arm and fingers a series of feet to touch a screen in a particular way when I can efficiently accomplish the same task through a mouse click and <3 inches of mouse movement or a simple click of a key on the keyboard?
 


Don't think someone hasn't thought of that.

Look at all of the permissions you agree to give apps you install on your tablets and phones. It could be happening now.
 
wow that's pretty naïve.. think of that terroest guy that wore a mask in the remote desert that beheaded them folks .. they used his voice to id him ?? where did they get that from?? did he at one time just go to a gov office or what ever and say '' hay man record my voice so you can use it to track me down one day if I do something illegal ??

most likely from when he gamed on steam and talked to his buddies in the game and tracked him starting with his ip address and worked it down from it .. see after 911 the u.s went facial recognition and fingerprint -- u.k went in to voice recognition to id and track them terrorist folks - this is why steam is in England .. this is the era where all are guilty before proven innocent.. just like the nsa with the phone call and e-mail thing .. and with your thinking above you just posted is why they get by doing it
 
I'd rather have a touch screen on my laptop than not have it. Why remove or not provide me with the option? That at least should be there... the OPTION!

P.s. I have a Surface Pro 3 so obviously see the benefit.
 


Please re-read my original statement and you'll see I was agreeing with you all along.

Let's evaluate:

"Don't think someone hasn't thought of that."

Because I've used a double-negative by using both "Don't" and "hasn't" in the sentence, the sentence essentially equates to:

"Do think someone has thought of that."

It's that kind of lack of understanding that allows terrorists to walk in the front door.
 
Touch is pain. Even the kids don't use it on their laptops. Waste of money but you can always get really good specs without touch.
 

The Surface is effectively a transformable and would be unusable as such without touch. Also, the keyboard+pad does not even come as standard.

For a laptop which is permanently attached to its keyboard and track-pad, the touch-screen becomes far less important and personally, I would much prefer saving ~$100 by ditching touch and the hardened LCD cover glass that goes with it. I would much prefer using that extra $100 on something I would use more often like more RAM, faster CPU, faster IGP/GPU, larger HDD/SSD, higher-resolution screen, etc.
 
I have a Yoga 2 Pro thinking I would use it in tablet mode most of the time, but typing with the on-screen keyboard just doesn't happen. If I end up needing to do any typing, I just open it back to laptop mode. I do use the touch feature in laptop mode often and feels very natural. I just don't use the tablet mode, at least not until the keyboard comes up automatically when I tap in a text field like iOS does.
 
As many computer users are also skilled "touch typists" (look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls, you young whipper-snappers), touch screens force the user to stop in mid-train and switch processes to perform a task, and then return to another process. Plus, the screens will become so gummed up with fingerprints and smudges that readability will drop and users will quite possibly destroy the machines by spraying Windex onto the screen to clean them. A useless fad.
 

Quite simply because the vast majority of users don't need that much power and don't want to pay extra for it. Pentiums, Celerons, and even Atoms are adequate for casual computing that most tablets and laptops are used for.
 
I rather they focus the money on better motion gesture capturing systems that are in built into these devices.
Click to expand...

^^ that.

I do think that touch displays are valuable and powerful, but it seems to me that the feature is quite overrated. When I switched from a 2-in-1 (a horrible one, BTW) to a Chomebook, I never once found myself reaching out to touch the screen. Ever. It was a feature that I only used because Windows 8/8.1 sort of demanded it.
 
i couldn't care less for touch on laptops. give me a nice 16:10 ips screen with 1200p/1600p, maybe even with a matte finish and you have a winner.

but now everything is touch, glare, 16:9 and either a shitty 786p TN, or some artificially high-res 3200x1800 screen with a shitty rgbw-matrix resulting in TN-like contrasts.
how about a display you can work with, instead of a smeared mess that's only good on paper?
 
Do we really need touch on smartphones, or is it just the current fad? Would you use any other "screened" device with your hands between the screen and your eyes? Sometimes it's easier to just point and touch than try to work with the god awful touch pads.
 
Well, touch screens are old hat, we need near touch screens that won't be covered in finger prints.

. In some cases it is good to point to things on the screen with a finger and stop getting repetitive strain injuries with the mouse or keyboard.
 

If you were to constantly use touch on a laptop or desktop PC, all you would actually achieve is increase the strain on your elbows, shoulder and back. It may feel better initially but your whole body will probably regret it after a few months.
 
I have a DELL touch screen all in one, very nice system indeed running windows 8.1
I rarely ever use the touch screen at all, other than maybe to get the charms menu which is more convenient than mouse, but that is about it. I still spend most time in desktop mode.
The native metro mode apps seems to be made for kids, they have minimal functionality and no way to access any of the options you have in desktop mode. Evernote for example, utter crap in metro mode, as is windows mail.
Also using a touch screen when sitting at a desk is not comfortable, it makes your arm ache very quickly.
If you tilt the monitor so it is almost horizontal then it is better, but then it covers your keyboard and mouse.
 
I will never forsake the mighty mouse and keyboard combo.

No user interface will replace that for me. I put off getting a touch screen only phone for YEARS, but then it became the day that all phones with physical keyboards were crap and outdated.

Tactile feedback for life!
 


If i recall on my parents Windows 8 tablet if you use the internet explorer tile instead of desktop mode the keyboard comes and goes like ios/android.
 
I love the touch on my surface pro 3 and would never pay a laptop without touch again. As a matter of fact I would like to have touch or gesture recognition on my desktop
 
I don't understand the need for touch on products where there are better forms of input. Touch isn't superior - as far as typing goes it still requires a keypad. In the sense of a keypad it becomes gimmicky, awkward, the virtual keys are too small to be of any real use. It's a stop gap measure for smaller devices where traditional inputs won't fit. Unless you're clicking yes/no buttons, it's really quite inferior. Add to that the issue of fingerprints all over your screen, whether a laptop or home pc monitor with touch capability. It's just not needed.

It's like a swiss army knife. Out in the woods, no room for the whole gamut of kitchen knives? Too heavy to carry all those around and you need portability and a tool that still suffices? It's great. Beats using a sharp stick or a rock. But back in your home kitchen, does it make sense to get rid of your 30 piece cutlery set and throw it all out using a swiss army knife as a replacement utensil? No. Sporks are handy too if you're at a cafeteria and want something compact, multipurpose and it's better than eating spaghetti with your hands. I've yet to go to anyone's house and reach for flatware only to be confronted by a big drawer full of sporks. Touchpads are nothing more than a digital spork.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom