Touchscreen laptops

StewartR

StewartR

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I might be in the market for a new laptop. It's about 6 years since I bought one, and I'm way out of touch with the market. So yesterday I stopped in at PC World to browse around.

I was amazed to find that just about every single laptop - with the notable exception of Apple ones, which is suggestive - featured a touchscreen.

To my mind that feels all wrong as far as the ergonomics are concerned. When I use a laptop, my hands usually rest on the keyboard, which is relatively far from the screen. It's a bit of a stretch to reach the screen in order to do something. I totally appreciate that touchscreens are intuitive. But I certainly wouldn't want to use a touchscreen desktop machine, because I'm sure that after a few hours I'd need physio on my arm/shoulder, and I'm concerned that a laptop would be the same.

So what's going on here? Are we all being forced to buy touchscreen laptops just because Microsoft thought it was a good idea when they bodged their desktop OS and their mobile OS together into Windows 8? What are the ergonomics like in real life usage? Would it be smart to ensure I buy a machine with a touchpad that supports multi-touch gestures (pinch, swipe, scroll etc) so that I can do as much as possible without having to lift my arms from the keyboard?

Any insights and advice welcomed. Thanks.
 
There is a girl who sits in front of me in some of my classes at university with a touch screen laptop. It look really awkward for her to use it. She has to lean into it over the keyboard and sort of, point at the screen.

Plus her screen always looks a mess after break, I can see it from behind her. Greasy, fingerprinty smears all over it. I mean I don't know about you, but I always eat at my desk and I do things like licking my fingers and occasionally I might even have mucky hands from outside or something. The thought of repeatedly planting oil, grease, dirt, food etc all over my very expensive laptop screen just sounds abhorrent. We are humans, we touch our hair and our face. My iPad starts to look a bit gross after an hour of using it.

And to be honest, I see no advantage of touch screen over keyboard shortcuts. I can whiz around my Macs without using the mouse quite easily. Keyboard shortcuts become intuitive when you've used them a fair bit - I should imagine that Windows has a similar set of features that people just don't use. I'd rather use keyboard shortcuts and keep my hands on the keys where they're being productive than keep lifting it up to touch the screen.

Something else to consider too. I have a quite serious shoulder injury from overreaching at a desk while retouching at work. This is not scientific, but I would imagine that if you have your keyboard in a good position for your posture, then repeatedly overreaching to touch the screen is not going to be very good for you at all in the long term.

But on the plus side, you get to feel like Tom Cruise in Minority Report.
 
My current laptop is touchscreen (Lenovo X1) and I initially thought it was a gimmick. However after less than a week it is now a feature I would want in my next laptop.
 
We have one but only use the screen touch when surfing the web...
 
I have a touch screen ultrabook and use the touch all the time. It has become natural to select scroll and zoom etc by touching the screen. So natural I get the urge to reach out sitting at the PC but haven't touched the monitor yet :) .

Thing about Window 8 is it is 2 operating systems in one. You've got the normal desktop with a different start menu that runs mouse input programs where you wouldn't want to touch the screen (but you can if you want to)... and you've got the tile world of 'apps'. the apps are very touch screen orientated. Its just natural to swipe a news app for the next story or pinch a picture or video to see it larger - apps are windows 8 being a tablet and the laptop is then just a tablet with a bolted on keyboard.

Don't think I'd consider a new laptop without touch now.
 
I've recently bought a Dell Inspiron 15 with touchscreen - I didn't initially want one but it came as standard with the processor options I wanted. Like inkiboo, it's something I would now look for in a laptop. I don't use the touchscreen for everything, the laptop still has keyboard mousepad, etc. like any other. But for some things it's very handy, particularly reader apps (Adobe, Zinio, etc.), page scrolling (Flickr, etc.), navigating the metro screen (Windows 8/8.1), etc.

Touchscreen is being driven by Windows 8/8.1 - and it is a very different experience, as RobertP says it's two OS in one, and whilst the Metro interface works needs better apps (the least Metro integrated apps are currently those associated with Office 365, Microsoft not quite getting its two core products to play nicely with each other) the integration of the touchscreen interface has been done very well and is intuitive and genuinely useful.

I wouldn't use a touchscreen for typing - the ergonomics don't work. Mind you, the new mac-style laptop keyboards are pretty crap on most laptops.

If you definitely don't want the touchscreen, look at Dell who still offer that as an option. And for a general business laptop I'd look at Dell anyway - either Vostro if you want something for the business basics or Inspiron if you want something that will do a bit more. Even my Macbook wielding colleagues have said nice things about my new Inspiron and its touchscreen..
 
CharlotteM said:
Something else to consider too. I have a quite serious shoulder injury from overreaching at a desk while retouching at work. This is not scientific, but I would imagine that if you have your keyboard in a good position for your posture, then repeatedly overreaching to touch the screen is not going to be very good for you at all in the long term.
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That's exactly what I was concerned about. Thanks.
 
I use a Panasonic Toughbook for work and find the touchscreen very useful when my hands are full of cables/tools or it's balanced at the top of a ladder :D
 
gramps said:
I use a Panasonic Toughbook for work and find the touchscreen very useful when my hands are full of cables/tools or it's balanced at the top of a ladder :D
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Yeah, but what about when it's on your lap?
 
StewartR said:
Yeah, but what about when it's on your lap?
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Well touchscreen is an 'option' so the keyboard can be used but TBH I use the touchscreen for most of what I do on that machine - but not typing.
 
StewartR said:
@inkiboo @sep9001 @RobertP @Alastair - Thanks for your inputs, folks. How do you feel about the ergonomics issue which I and CharlotteM mentioned?
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It's a non-issue, less of an issue than the poor posture associated with the way most people use their laptops anyway. Because you don't need to use it. And I'm a occupational health and safety professional if that will lend further weight to my assessment. I find that when I am using the touchscreen it's because I'm doing something where the ergonomics of using the touchscreen are better than using the keyboard. I'm ore likely to use it if I have my laptop on my lap than at a desk.

If someone is struggling to use the touchscreen, it probably indicates another underlying problem - most likely desk too high for the chair, but could also be incorrect distance between laptop and user (doing DSE assessments I find it's not unusual to find vanity about needing to wear glasses taking precedence over a good working posture), or just inappropriate use of the technology (either not knowing shortcuts or persisting in using the touchscreen for an appearance of tech-savvy or coolness).
 
I use my ultrabook on my lap most of the time. Touching the screen is easier than using the keyboard and pretty much at the same distance. Arm position is more relaxed than elbows back to get hands on the keyboard.

You don't use a tablet flat on your lap. The angled screen on the ultrabook is about where you would hold a tablet. It doesn't change hinge angle as you poke at the screen either. Stiffness of hinge is just greater than natural finger pressure on the screen.
 
gramps said:
Well touchscreen is an 'option' so the keyboard can be used but TBH I use the touchscreen for most of what I do on that machine - but not typing.
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RobertP said:
I use my ultrabook on my lap most of the time. Touching the screen is easier than using the keyboard and pretty much at the same distance. Arm position is more relaxed than elbows back to get hands on the keyboard.

You don't use a tablet flat on your lap. The angled screen on the ultrabook is about where you would hold a tablet. It doesn't change hinge angle as you poke at the screen either. Stiffness of hinge is just greater than natural finger pressure on the screen.
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:plus1: To both the quoted posts. About a year ago, I bought this netbook which is Win8 and touchscreen. Whenever I'm typing, I use the proper keyboard but for clicking through (for example) the forum, I use my fat fingers on the touchscreen. I've even been known to use a mouse plugged into it (I hate trackpads, although this one isn't too bad). More recently, I bought my wife the small Lenovo Yoga (the older one that folds in half to be used as a tablet or "tented" or as a normal netbook) and she uses hers the same way. I also have a Surface tablet with the keyboard cover but tend to use the touchscreen keyboard on that rather than the keyboard. I'm usually in bed when using that though so nowhere solid to stand it up and use the keyboard.
 
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