A statement that is directly refuted by the experience of the author and others who've actually used modern touch devices. Also, isn't half the point of having a touch/type/mouse device that you can also use the touchscreen in those situations where using a keyboard or mouse is impractical, but have them available for when they are convenient?

As the guy below me says: you're still not getting it. The article isn't saying that people poke at a vertical surface all stupid day. It's saying that people type on a keyboard all day, and occasionally reach up to poke at something when it's convenient. (And, when it's not convenient to type, they can poke some more. And then go right back to typing when it's more convenient to do so again.)

You can hate on it all you want, and say that the base technology has been around a long time, but until you actually use the new technology for more than a few hours, it would seem that your opinion is based entirely on speculation and outdated experience. A 1980's touch screen is not the same as a 2012 touch screen.

So you're suggesting that we should never have transitioned from horses and buggies to motor cars, because driving a car takes some getting used to? The fact of the matter is that if you haven't used something, you can't make an informed opinion of it. You can have an opinion, and you're welcome to have that opinion, but it won't be an informed opinion.

This is slashdot, so I can forgive you for not reading the article, but for your convenience I'll provide the relevant excerpt here:

When Steve Jobs decried touchscreen laptops in 2010, he was merely relaying the common wisdom of decades of user experience research into "gorilla arm syndrome." Simply put, it's the idea that if you hold out your arm in front of a touchscreen for an extended period of time, it's not going to be particularly comfortable. However, that assumes an awful lot — what if you're not holding your arms out in space waiting to touch things, but resting them comfortably on a keyboard?

We've been looking at this all wrong. A touchscreen isn't a replacement for a keyboard or mouse, it's a complement. If I want to type things on my laptop and have enough room to comfortably open that clamshell and stretch out my arms, the keyboard's still my best bet. I'm not going to touch-type 70 words per minute on a touchscreen keyboard. But when I'm in the cramped quarters of a train, plane, or standing in a line — say, when the only thing standing between a critical email and its recipient is a few dozen words and a tap of the button marked "Send" — I can grab that Windows 8 laptop by its hinged section, one hand on either side of the screen, and tap out that message with my thumbs.

You're issuing a false dilemma by saying that it's all touch or all keyboard/mouse. It can be both, and that's the point of the article. Keyboards are usually better for typing, but using a mouse isn't always easier for pointing, and sometimes using a keyboard isn't convenient. Having touch, mouse, and keyboard all available makes sense, because you can use whichever is best for the situation you're in.

The Surface Pro does include touch support - 10 point multitouch, in fact. It happens to also have an active digitizer to support pen input. It can do both.

The fact that you didn't know that implies that you really have no idea what you're talking about.

Do or do not. There is no try.

Until you've actually used a touch/laptop hybrid device, don't go knocking it. When I say "use", I don't mean "try", I mean actually used it for day-to-day tasks for a couple weeks. Not "poked one in the mall and didn't know how to do everything right away, so I gave up," or worse yet, "saw a picture or video online and haven't even tried one in person." Spare me the "but I know I won't like it," because until you've actually used the device, you don't know.

The overwhelming opinion of people I know who have actually used these devices that are neither a tablet nor a laptop, but really a bit of both, is that they work well and are not just a gimmick. New things can take some getting used to. That doesn't mean they're bad.

You like the DVR, right? Disassemble it, take out the hard drive, figure out what type it is (probably 2.5" IDE or something of the like), buy a new one, then do a bit-exact clone to copy the hdd right over. Put it back in, and you're right back where you were.

It's a work in progress, but there's a new YouTube series called Crash Course which presently covers biology and world history. They're planning to encompass other subjects in the future as well, but it just recently started. The history lessons are taught by author/nerd John Green and the biology is taught by his brother Hank Green. I suggest you check it out; it's got lots of neat graphics, simple explanations, and is easy to follow.

As mentioned in other posts, Khan Academy is also a fantastic online resource. It's not quite as spiffy as Crash Course, but covers far more subjects, and is easy to follow.

Yo dawg... I heard u dislike being tracked, so we put a tracker in your trackers so you could be tracked while we track.

This exists for Microsoft Office; it's called Search Commands and is available as a free add-on. It works pretty well, and does exactly what you describe: you type in a search box, and it shows relevant actions. The addon is made by Microsoft, so obviously they do have this idea and are considering its applications.

I was excited when I found this product, since I've been thinking something like this would be nice ever since the ribbon was introduced. But you know what? I never use it. I find it much quicker to just use things where they're built in. Once you get used to it, everything in the ribbon is actually pretty well laid out and easy to find. One nice feature of the Search Commands addon is that it'll tell you how to get to the tool normally. It's a good way to figure out how to get places, but once you know where things are, it's much faster to go straight there.

I can see this being really useful for finding creatives commons licensed images. If you find an image or diagram you'd really like to include in a document, but it's not openly licensed, you could look for other images like it, but use Google Image Search's recently-added license filter to find CC-licensed materials.