@bradgoodman: I agree, the microsoft surface is an excellent example. touch is here to stay but not always on the screen. Touchscreens are great when executed correctly, just look at the iphone/itouch, now imagine it with the new microsoft behind the screen touch tech. As far as mobile devices go touch is where the action is. Touch opens up more screen real estate and allows for an input device that wont wear out quickly. One big problem with most of the netbooks is the usage of "desktop" operating systems on them, Granted they have mobile features but most of the time it doesnt cut it. The itouch browses the web just fine with meager system resources, with ubuntu being ported to ARM i can see an upsurge in cheaper net devices just another step below the netbooks of now(PDA 2.0?). All that would be required is a touch oriented lightweight desktop environment. As Canonical/Ubuntu seems to be trying to emulate OSX lately i could see it working very well.

However fast it runs XP, you'd always be able to make it run even faster with windows 95 instead!