Usefullness of a touch screen on a standard laptop?

[JohnnyRedLight]

Since it seems like people get excited when a laptop has a touch screen, I thought I would question why? How many of you, that have a standard laptop with a touch screen, actually use the touch?

I have a Spectre X360 13t. I use it in Laptop mode about two thirds of the time and either display or tablet mode the other third and I can honestly say that I have never once (except the day I got it) reached up to try and touch the screen when its in laptop mode. It seems rather uncomfortable and awkward.

 

[mook6_99]

It is rather awkward at first but I find it easier to use than the trackpad on many laptops. I have never been a fan of how unpredictable the sensitivity settings are between different laptops. With a touchscreen it removes the guesswork. Although I feel that this being a surface device it should have had a different mode other than the standard clamshell. Touching a screen is one thing but using a pen in that mode..... I don't know about that.

 

[fpena911]

I didn't think it was necessary at first but now it feels strange to use a laptop without it.

I have a standard laptop with it and my Surface 3 as well. In both cases I use the touchscreen when doing a lot of scrolling like on the web. Very convenient and you get used to doing it the way you would on a phone.

It's one of those things where you don't really think you need it but once you have it you can't live without it!

 

[anon(10237065)]

Touchscreen is a great addition to a laptop. Can't imagine life without it. Surface Pen would be much more debatable but that would be off topic!

Especially for website browsing and working with media (photo, video). Much more intuitive.

 

[sod1497]

If the trackpad is comfortable, in general you don't miss the touch screen (that's why Surface tablets come with a trackpad, because is comfortable enough). But it brings the apps, the photos, the experience itself to you. Although I need a responsive, smooth trackpad, I just love touchscreens. And combined with the Surface pen it's the best.

 

[JohnnyRedLight]

Wow... 4 - 0 in favor of touchscreens for standar laptops. I guess maybe if my trackpad didn't have gesture support for scrolling and zooming and what-not, I probably would have used touch more and eventually gotten used to it.

 

[Prometheus2021]

My Acer has a more than decent touchscreen. And while I don't use it as often as I'd like to it does come in handy when I need it. A few times my trackpad has given me some trouble so while I figured out and solved the problem the touchscreen came in handy. Some games from the store like angry birds and bejeweled and a few others really do work best with the touchscreen. I rather have a touch screen and not need it and need it and not have it. But that's just me.

 

[mohjaba]

Well, I don't have touch screen yet, but I use my tablet instead. So, my reason is that I want to have one device that combine the features of both my laptop and tablet:

Laptop: Production, Programming, Design, Video editing ...
Tablet: Reading books, browsing websites, showing videos ...

 

[Interludes]

My laptop has touchscreen and I use it just for little things, for pausing a movie or scrolling in edge, but I've noticed me trying to touch the screen on the iMac we have at the office.
Touch on a laptop isn't surely major, but I like to have it. It's more immersive and I can see myself using it more if I had a pen

 

[TheFlyingDutchBros]

The appeal of the touch screen on the Surface Laptop, for me at least, is that it works with the Surface Pen which is by all rights a quality stylus. OneNote and Edge both have very useful inking features that would be easy to use on a laptop and enable you to more seamlessly do things than you would be able to without a touch screen. In particular, I think the touch screen and stylus combo would be very useful for students when taking notes on OneNote (or a similar application) or reading course material in an ebook format because circling, underlining and highlighting things would be a lot easier. It also makes selecting portions of your screen with a screen clipping application a lot easier. Now, if you don't find yourself doing things like this regularly, it might not be useful for you, but a lot of people do and for them it is handy to have.

 

[JaimitoFrog]

Once you start to use it, it is awkward when u use a old tech laptop. You want to zoom in a image, pinch and zoom. Surf the web, swipe left or right to go back a page. Hyperlink, done. When you don't need precision, it works a lot more intuitive than the touch pad. Of course, able to ink when you need to is a great option to have.

 

[kaktus1389]

Since it seems like people get excited when a laptop has a touch screen, I thought I would question why? How many of you, that have a standard laptop with a touch screen, actually use the touch?

I have a Spectre X360 13t. I use it in Laptop mode about two thirds of the time and either display or tablet mode the other third and I can honestly say that I have never once (except the day I got it) reached up to try and touch the screen when its in laptop mode. It seems rather uncomfortable and awkward.

I've got an Asus 2-in-1 but I use it as a laptop most of the time, but that doesn't mean I don't use touchscreen. It's really useful for me when browsing the web or even navigating, because why bother moving cursor if you can simply touch the target on the screen?

Since it's made for students it's logical that they've enabled touch and pen on it, because that's Surface philosophy and it's useful for them when scrolling through Word/PDF documents or surfing the web. They've grown up using touchscreens on their mobile phones, so perhaps this could be a matter of which category of computing devices have you used first (or used the most) and what do you use your device for.

EDIT: More useful than a touchbar though

 

[JohnnyRedLight]

EDIT: More useful than a touchbar though

Good one!

 

[sd4f]

I currently use a surface 3, and use touch a lot.

My brother used to have a Sony Vaio Pro 13, which also had touch, but the laptop failed. It was quite good with it, albeit I think windows 10 has had some improvements to make touch better, whereas windows 8 was still early days.

To answer the question, I personally would avoid a laptop without touch now. Desktops, I would probably prefer to not have touch (although if the surface studio monitor was available as a standalone, I would be really tempted) but laptop now, I think it's better to use a touch screen in a lot of cases.

Especially in cases when I'm browsing, sliding the screen is easy and much quicker than the touchpad. There is an issue though where a lot of buttons are still a little small and can be hard to hit with the screen.

 

[SpaciousZebra]

Sometimes if you're trying to highlight something or zoom into a piece of an article it's very useful. I can see why it could become more of a headache than it's worth, though...imagine the touchscreen issues causing these Surface Laptops to crash somehow. All of the users like you who didn't find use for the touchscreen would be outraged.

 

[L0n3N1nja]

My Surface Pro I almost never touch the screen when the keyboard is attached, why reach past the track pad? Seems counter productive.

Asus T100 I use it occasionally when on my lap to scroll web pages, easier than the track pad, but other wise don't touch it.

I'm one of those that see zero reason for the Surface Laptop to have a touch screen.

 

[Yzakhiel]

It's only good when your laptop can become a Tablet IMO... otherwise, you use the trackpad

 

[Photonsym]

Scrollings handy and pinch zoom I guess?

 

[Rupert Holmes]

I use touch and the Arc mouse on my SP3s. I only use the trackpad, if I have too. I use a trackball on my 17" Laptop, and occasionally find myself reaching to the screen, although it is not touch. Never cared for trackpads.

 

[Chris Knopff]

On a 2-in-1 or tablet I prefer a touch screen. A laptop, not really.