If you are a kid today growing up with smartphones and tablets, the fact that you can't touch things when you're old enough to start interacting with computers would be weird. That you naturally default to using the mouse is a learned habit. It's not one the next generation will have when they grow up; give them only a pointer device and they will not buy your device. If Microsoft weren't positioning itself to work the way they will be accustomed to just as well, it'd be ensuring its own demise when they become the next generation of workers and computer customers.

Microsoft is trying to play the long game, as always; whether they're doing it well is up for debate. They want Windows to work for you with your mouse, for Bob who wants a tablet to watch videos and check e-mail on, for Stacy who wants a tablet to seamlessly switch between working in Office and entertainment, for Josh who only uses a smartphone, and for Johnny who's just growing up and will be a potential Windows customer in 5-10 years.

Lets say I'm in a webbrowser, like I assume 99% of the population is 99% of the time (locally running games excluded). What am I going to touch? Unlike on a phone the pinch/zoom gesture that makes clicking on links practical isn't comfortable in the slightest (I have to bend my wrist uncomfortably to put both my thumb and index finger on the screen at the same time). Even worse, desktop browsers aren't going to fetch mobile versions of pages that are meant to be used with touch.

The one place that I've ever seen it being a decent input choice on my laptop is clicking through the menus in minecraft. Unusually massive buttons that only need a single tap of the finger to use. I don't think anything other than minecraft or other "low-fi is cool" style games could really get away with doing that though.

Even if they make all of Windows "lo-fi" like minecraft, which I suppose is what they are aiming for with windows 8, it won't matter. The things people actually use windows for won't/can't follow suit.

I don't know, maybe I'm just an old grump.

You're not forward-looking enough. 2012 was the beginning of the end of the laptop form factor. Windows 8 needs to last a good decade or so for Microsoft, so it better be ready for the form factors that will be popular in the coming years. That's going to be tablets of all sizes you can dock to a keyboard for laptop-like work. With a hard hinge or kickstand, they look and work like the laptop you're used to. They're otherwise undocked or have the screen flipped down over the keyboard for tablet-like interaction.

There's no wrist contortion when using the same computer if you can move the screen flat in a split second to switch modes of interaction. If you're not convinced that using the full internet on a touchscreen PC can't be as fluid, easy and enjoyable as it is on your mobile device or Android tablet, find a store with a Surface Pro tablet on display, hold it in your hand without the magnetic keyboard attached, and tap Internet Explorer 10. It feels like the future, man. If your phone feels fluid, pinch zooming on an Intel Core i5 feels like you're in an Iron Man movie working with Jarvis. No mobile sites required; the only thing that you'll have trouble doing just as easy and accurately as if you had a mouse is menus that have hover states.

We've had laptops like that for a decade. Tablets make sense, I don't doubt that, and laptops that can turn into tablets are fine, but the technology is just silly in regular laptops.

If Windows 8 is all about Microsoft getting ready to ditch regular laptops let alone desktops entirely... well besides thinking that is a mistake I think they should have manned up and never pretended it was for regular laptops in the first place.

I've used a surface briefly. I walked away from it with that "gee wiz that was neato... but adds no value to my life" vibe that I got years ago from Beryl/Compiz.