I completely agree with your assessment. I have a Transformer tablet with the keyboard dock. I actually keep it docked 80% or more of the time. When it's docked, not only do you get the full keyboard, but the screen can be adjusted to any angle, it has full USB ports, and it has another 8 hours of battery life. The keyboard dock has a touchpad, but I NEVER use it - instead I use the touchscreen to navigate. Since the keyboard dock is the size of the tablet itself, I only have to reach out about 6 inches to the screen. I think this is a very efficient way to use a computer, so I think that touchscreen laptops, once people use them and get used to them (and aren't scared away by geeks with preconceived notions that haven't actually tried using a computer this way,) will catch on pretty well.
I've also tried out Windows 8 (x64 version) on a Fujitsu tablet with a keyboard dock very similar to my Transformer - in fact the keyboard keys were identical, so I suspect it was manufactured by the same Chinese company that created my Transformer keyboard dock. I was blown away by how well Microsoft has made Windows work with a touchscreen in Windows 8. I work for a medical clinic, and for five years now we've used convertible touchscreen tablet/laptops from Fujitsu. The previous ones we used needed a stylus, but our current ones the touchscreens work with your fingers as well as a stylus. Windows XP Tablet version was ok, but they just tacked on touch. Windows 7 improved things, including better handwriting recognition, but it was still difficult to do everything with touch. Windows 8 *almost* seems like it was designed for touch. With Windows 7, you were still stuck with the mouse-centric controls, and for example you had to do a little tap-up-tap and hold to select and drag a window. With Windows 8, you can actually use it intuitively - hold down on a window title bar and move your finger, it will drag the window. A million little things like that. And I'm talking about the classic desktop here, not the Metro interface. The Metro interface is designed for touch, but since the applications I'd need to use for work aren't available in Metro versions, I didn't test that out a whole lot. It didn't take me more than an hour or two to get used to using Windows 8 with touch instead of a mouse.
It was great to be able to undock the Windows 8 tablet when I wanted to use it on the couch, hand it around to friends, etc. Then dock it to the keyboard, and you have a full blown pretty standard Windows 8 laptop. And in either mode you have at least one USB port, as well as all the other normal PC ports on the keyboard dock.
I think both sides of the argument over laptop vs tablet are essentially correct: Tablets are good as consumption devices, but not great at real work. Laptops are great for real work, but not so great for casual use on the couch. Convertible tablets are the best of both worlds.
But given all that, I still use my desktop quite a bit too. There's something to be said for wired ethernet and 6 TB of hard drive space for downloading. The one device that gets the least use now? My laptop. Hadn't even used it in almost a year, until I plugged it into a monitor so we could watch videos in bed. SO much nicer to travel with my Transformer and an external USB drive.