The dismissal of touchscreens is not entirely fair. To us techies, the hand-eye co-ordintaion required to use a mouse/trackpad-pointer combination is taken for granted. However, many people seem to have a block with this arrangement, my father has struggled for years in co-ordinating the two, and I know many other younger users who have similar problems. They all complain of feeling "detached" from the computer for this reason, and somehow keep having to look down at the mouse to sense how to move it. To be able to touch the screen and see an instant result will be a breakthrough for these users, and confer a much greater sense of involvement in using their Pcs and laptops. Who cares if the screen is covered with fingerprints if it means you can actually use the thing to your advantage? After all, you don't worry about food messing the plate when you eat a meal, do you? You don't see i-Phone users complaining about their touch screens either! This advance has been long overdue, and I for one welcome it wholeheartedly! However, I do think keyboards will remain for some time, on screen typing is not really an advantage so far, at least!

It's bad enough I have to tolerate people touching the monitor to point out stuff on the screen, but to use it as a primary means to interact with the computer? No thanks. Touchscreens are made for situations where you need dynamic buttons and that's it. They're good for kiosks and phones, but computer interfaces are simply not designed for their use (try resizing a window with one).

Good luck with *that* industry.

The way a touchscreen should replace a mouse is by having something like a mousepad be the touchscreen, not your monitor. It would be illuminated like a regular screen, and perhaps have customizable icons to change functions. It would be far more natural to control things down where they've been controlled all along. You could even put it just below the space bar, and use your thumbs for simple things, and that way keep your fingers on the keyboard.
If I've just come up with a brilliant and original idea, please send me money.

The NDS has a touch screen but frankly it's just a gimmick, most games don't really use it or offer it as an alternative to the keys.

However some of the games could only have been done usefully with a touch screen (Brain Training for example) and where they used their imagination it was tremendous fun.

As for dirty screens, just use washable screens. Also, imagine a soft rubber thimble that fits over your digits with a small nub on the end for touching the screen. If guitarists can use a plectrum, geeks can use thimbles.

The potential is enormous, it's the next revolution in computing, just as big as the step from keyboard+dos to mouse+GUI.

It's just that most people have been doing things so long the keyboard way (There are guy who've been computer geeks for 40 years+ now) they find it hard to imagine doing it any other way and are not very good at imagining useful multitouch software.

But once it comes, those who insist on the mouse+keyboard will be just as funny and archaic as those who insisted valve amplifiers were better than digital ones because the sound was "warmer"...

Touchscreen means fingerprints over fingerprints on the screen. Nobody is bothered by this?

-I can't think of a single useful function of touch screens. Much like voice commands. I've been able to talk to my pc for over a decade yet as of now I have yet to think of anything useful to say to it.

Capacitive multi touch will quickly prevail over that horrid two foil based touchscreen design.