A touchscreen laptop is only a good idea if it can also be used like a tablet (with a detached keyboard). Otherwise it's useless.
Why? My SO has a Windows laptop with touchscreen, touchpad, keyboard and mouse. She uses the mouse but sometimes pushing a button by touching the screen saves time. If you think about it, by the time you reached for the mouse and started aiming for the button you already pressed it with your finger. The touchpad reduces the travel of the hand but not the time to aim. Hitting something with a finger is always faster. She is missing that on her work laptop.
> The touchpad reduces the travel of the hand but not the time to aim.
This is likely true for casual users, but for veterans this is a skill issue. My touchpad accuracy/speed more than matches most folks touchscreen accuracy/speed.
It may also reflect the quality of the touchpad. For a Windows laptop, it's virtually guaranteed to be of lower quality than something offered on an Apple laptop.
> If you think about it, by the time you reached for the mouse and started aiming for the button you already pressed it with your finger. The touchpad reduces the travel of the hand but not the time to aim. Hitting something with a finger is always faster.
Depends on how accurate you need to be. How fast/confident you can be at hitting with a finger can easily drop off a cliff.
Reaching up to touch the screen is slower than reaching down to the trackpad. Also consider trackpoint.
Skilled users can make the reach and the motion one. You don't need to stabilize your palm on the rest to use the trackpad. Same way I don't need to use F and J for the keyboard (and kinda wish I could remove those annoying bumps)
I used touch on Windows to test multitouch and pen input support in a familiar environment. Less hassle than grabbing a tablet, setting up remote DevTools, etc.