It's only useful if the laptop is convertible (screen can flip all the way around & become like a heavy tablet). Particularly useful when I need to run something Android-based. I don't see the point in a touchscreen you have to reach out over the keyboard to use.

Touchscreens have their use on other devices but are a gimmick on laptops. Reaching up and over your keyboard, suspending your arm in the air while you tap on a thin, wobbly display is an ergonomic disaster and a shite input method in general.

Now if the screen can flip around into a tablet position then it makes a lot more sense, but just a touchscreen on its own is a gimmick.

It can be very useful for quick actions when you don't have a mouse.

Mine is convertible to tablet mode, which is actually really useful when cooking etc or in small spaces.

Probably wouldn't have a problem buying one without a touch screen though.

I don't want fingerprints on my laptop screen.

it's not an antifeature (trivial to disable) so i'm ok with it.

my laptop has an extremely shitty trackpad that sometimes decides to stop functioning until a power cycle, so i have the touchscreen configured to work like a trackpad with xf86 mtrack driver and use it when my trackpad fucks up.

I don't like them. Anytime someone who uses one goes to use one of my normal laptops, they always try to touch the screen, which leaves fingerprints.

If you want a touchscreen, get a tablet.

I had a touch screen laptop for work at my previous job. I figured it out by accident after using for 4 years without noticing. I though "huh, that's cool. This could be useful", and then never actually used it for anything. I rate it a "meh" out of 10.

I don't really see the point in touchscreens, I think it's just a toy for a lot of money, like folding phones.only if you know exactly why you need it, then it's OK, but most people will just use this feature and stop, because I don't even know how convenient it is to draw in it, and whether it will damage the screen for a long time.

If you have to reach out to a screen to touch it, you're at risk of developing Gorilla Arms, a RMI.

Laptops are hell on your spine. Seriously reconsider.

I was given a laptop for work and it has a touchscreen. In fact, you can fold it all the way and use it as a tablet. But I always forget that it can do either.

So, I guess my opinion is that I don’t need or want it.

Never understood touchscreen on laptop. I can imagine artists might need this in some workflows but I doubt they’d use shitty touchscreen instead of specialized tools like stylus or dedicated device. But for everyone else idk when do you even want to use them.

Certainly interesting that we're only talking about it when Apple just announced it, after Windows laptops have done it for over a decade.

I had a touch screen laptop once. After the initial novelty of it, I never touched the screen again. And it was the convertible type that could open all the way round and turn into a tablet (keyboard/trackpad were disabled when it was open past a certain point).

I think the more interesting factor is bringing back the glowing logo. And that it's an OLED. Certainly looks like a nice laptop that tells everyone around "I have 'fuck you' money". I say this as a guy with a MacBook. They aren't all that expensive. But Apple's gone and done a wonderful job of telling thieves which one to grab, and it won't be mine, so that's a plus.

surprisingly useful to me

I don’t really need it most of the time, but I miss it when I don’t have it.

I owned one back in 2013, I think. It was very annoying and I'm sure the tech is better today. Still wouldn't want one because it is so counter intuitive and extra steps to do something you already could do just fine with a mouse or touchpad.

If the laptop comes with a touchscreen, great! But I'm not going out of my way to get one.

Unless I have a physical mouse the next best thing is touchscreen for me. I really hate touchpad. I haven't had much practice with the pointing stick aka red nub, but I'd probably prefer that with a little bit of practice over the touchpad as well.

I do get that an overly used touchpad screen on laptop is gross and I'd avoid using it, but if there weren't better alternatives..

Negative. A device trying to be everything will not succeed at anything. It also bumps the price which is already not cheap if you want a descent machine.

Might be nice to draw and stuff, tablet is still better imo

first of all, my fat fingers would never be able to select a cell. second of all, my old collegues were always poking my screen when they tried to show me something, and moved everything around. i ran to the it dude after the 3rd poke accident if i could disable the touchscreen somehow in device manager...he is like: dude i couldnt care less what you do with that laptop, just disable it in the bios, its easier.

I hate anything with touchscreens. Delayed feedback. Ugly interfaces.

I habe a Framework 12. I habe not used the Touchscreen in Laptop mode once. I use it in Tablet mode to read sheet music, but even then I usually have a little Bluetooth Keyboard/Trackpad combo that I use.

Sometimes it's faster to lift my finger to tap than go to the touchpad and move that + click, but it's not often

I only ever use touchscreen in tablet mode, and I'm only ever in tablet mode if I'm reading comics while eating lunch. Without a tablet mode, I find it pointless on laptops because I can be more efficient with keyboard and mouse/trackpad.

I mean, it sounds like a good feature on paper, and it's perfectly doable. Tablets have add-on keyboards, old phones had slide out keyboards, so touchscreens + keyboards IS a thing.

But, touchscreens on laptops? Nope. People don't want that.

As others have pointed out, touch has it's uses. For most people, probably not needed and maybe more of an active annoyance anyhow.

However, my Framework 12 foldable laptop with touch is extremely handy for my purposes. I intentionally purchased it over the larger/better Framework 13 because I need a touchscreen for work and I wanted it to be foldable to sit on cramped flat surfaces more easily.

I often work as a lighting technician supporting live DJs, and despite the venue having it's own touch screens, it's absolutely clutch to be able to bring my own and either use my lighting software or remote desktop to control the venue's lighting panels. Sometimes the venue will have panels that are unfortunately positioned or simply uncomfortably far away from the DJ's mixer. The mixer displays a waveform I need to be looking at to do effective lighting. Being able to have my touchscreen laptop there so I can touch the lighting cues as needed is crucial.

My work laptop is touchscreen. I only know because I was pointing something out to a colleague and accidentally touched it. I have never wanted it to be touchscreen and, since finding out that it is, I have never intentionally touched it.

Depends what you do with it obviously. Lighting software like Chamsys or Grand MA screams for touchscreen. For work I also need a Mac, and I stupidly hit the screen all the time.

If you're not into graphics / art design enough to have a separate wacom tablet, again it is useful in a pinch.

There's no "it's good!" no "it's bad!", it is just a matter of how useful it is for you. I don't know on windows, but with Gnome touchscreens work very well.

It's worse than using a mouse. Why would anyome want to reach that far to use it? It's useless for a laptop. I can see why it's used for an ipad.

The best use I have is if I'm filling on a huge form with lots of checkboxes. Steering the mouse to each one with a track pad is so fiddly compared to just tapping.

And for dragging maps around, where I don't have to with press to click or tap and hold every drag.

Touchscreens can serve a function. And that's predominantly when you have your laptop atop your lap. In a cafe or on a plane where even operating your touchpad may be hard for a lack of space (or for me size of gut). On the couch is another scenario like that. If you don't encounter those situations a lot, don't get it, especially if it's more expensive. If you hate fingerprints on any screen, don't get it. If you're not sure and money isn't an issue, take the extra feature.

I have never owned one. As a creative, I already have other devices for stylus use (iPad and Wacom). I see touch screen on laptop as a gimmick, as a rub in the face that the iPad isn’t shipping with a real unlocked OS already. It’s a good way to make the display dirty with finger grease. A good way to realize how flimzy they are.

I got one because i thought i could replace my drawing pad but it does not work as a replacement, you can normally turn it off though

I use it for drawing

If it's a convertible it has its uses I guess considering you can turn it into essentially a big tablet, although I don't like the keyboard being exposed on the bottom..

If it's an ordinary laptop I really don't see the point; among other issues it just feels awful to try and make more or less precise inputs when the screen hinge is actively fighting you by moving the screen back with every touch.

Then there are the smudges. I watch a lot of videos and stuff on my laptop and just can't stand when the screen is all gunged up, it's disgusting.

There are a lot of touchscreen Thinkpads out there

I hate touch screens on laptops.

I think it would be better for simpler UIs. I've heard GNOME with touchpad is a solid experience

It a nice toy.but not having a touchscreen on a laptop is not a deal-breaker for me, other than low-resolution screens (everything below roughly 200 DPI).

I like those for very bad laptops, like when the touchpad is buggy I can still use the touchscreen

Heresy

It's convenient when there's no mouse. Moving around on a trackpad can be slow and annoying. But not super necessary for me.

I had a Chromebook with touchscreen. I'd mostly just use it to tap on links when browsing lying on my back.

But I developed the bad habit of trying to do the same on my work laptop.

There are two times when i use it -

1 - when the touchpad stops working

2 - i have some work screens that involve checking boxes and signing.

I find it more convenient on the train, than fumbling with touchpad or the mouse on my knee. It even beats the keyboard nipple. And using Niri with it is a joy.

Mostly dependent on whether I want to be quiet with my device or am doing art, or if I'm doing like anything else. I didn't know the last laptop I bought even had touchscreen capabilities, and I wasn't really used to them on a laptop outside of a faulty toaster of a laptop I got nearly a decade ago, all before getting a new laptop a few years back.

Over time I've basically only ever used the touchscreen for digital art and the sort, playing certain games but don't want others in the library to hear my mouse clicks, and taking notes for like a single college course.

Otherwise, I don't really care about it since most of the time if I'm using it, the cursor will absolutely jump places because something like the side of my wrist or part of my forearm will be detected. Yeah, I need one of those drawing gloves to fix the problems I have, but that ain't happening since I have more important matters to attend to.

Only good if the laptop has a proper tablet mode for note-taking/drawing with a pen stored inside a chassis slot. I've a non-convertible Thinkpad that for whatever reason has a touchscreen and I end up activating it by accident more than on purpose. It also seems that the additional electric fields associated with the touch functionality makes the screen attract far more dust than any non-touch laptop.

So... it depends. If it's a normal laptop I'm not SUPER interested in it but don't hate it. I do use the track pad a lot so if that was messing up I could use the touch screen. But normally I won't use it in laptop mode. The depends is a 2 in 1. If I can flip it over and use it as a tablet I will do that. How nice it is depends on software tho in that case. A nice gesture based experience like Gnome would be great. But I doubt I'd enjoy doing that on windows. I haven't used windows in years but I imagine a touchscreen on it would be not very intuitive.

So the Framework Pro 13 annoys me since it can't flip all the way around. I actually am considering making a cyberdeck with an existing framework 13 mainboard I have and a framework pro screen and making it into a tablet form factor but nice and thick with plenty of ports and maybe a CD player. I'd love something like that.

I use it all the time,. so much so when i trouble shoot friends laptops i keep forgetting they don't have touch. I don't have a tablet for that very reason, I don't need more shit.

I have a Framework 12 on order to replace my Linux Surface Pro 7 that crapped itself.

as an aside, why is this an issue ? you know you can just not touch the screen yeah ? It's not compulsory ffs!

Every screen should be a touchscreen. We have kids growing up with touchscreen devices who then have to learn not all screens respond to touch even though it’s showing the same stuff. And it’s not just content but apps too. Microsoft has been pushing touchscreen PCs for years, trying to convince developers to build for them, bringing in support for Android apps. Apple waits years to ship a touchscreen on a MacBook that can run every iPhone and iPad app natively.