Sony Vaio L13 touchscreen PC

Desktop Touchscreen - Why?

I don't see the point of a touchscreen on a desktop pc. For text entry, a real physical keyboard beats a touchscreen handsdown; for gui manipulation, and I say this as a dedicated iPhone user, a mouse is far superior, because of its greater flexibility provided by separating pointer location and button press, and by the provision of multiple types of presses (right button vs left). Multi touch goes some way towards compensating for this but the mouse is still significantly better.

The reason touch screens have been so successful recently is that they have been implemented in situations where keyboards and mice are impractical or result in poor tradeoffs. A phone with a physical keyboard must be much bulkier, or must have a very small and hard to use key selection, or must force the reduction in other compenents (screen, battery), or all of the above. A mouse simply isn't practical without a surface to use it on, and mobile hardware needs to be in one piece, rather than multiple pieces that can get separated and lost (hence styluses being not so great either). None of these situations apply to a desktop pc, and sure enough, the pc comes with mouse and keyboard that work far better than the pointless touchscreen, which remains simply a pointless gimmick.