You already have a Windows 7 license? Awesome, you'll be able to put that on your new touch enabled laptop and use it's inbuilt touch capabilities too. The future has never looked brighter for you :-)

I hope someone mods this as off-topic. There's far too much common sense in these comments to be a part of this thread!

Relax! I'm sure you'll be able to install your favourite version of Linux on it, and then cry about how the hardware makers won't release open source touchscreen drivers for you even though you don't want to use it.

You mean like I fork out for hardware that has USB 3 ports even though I only own USB 2 hardware??? No wonder I'm broke and spend all my time lurking on slashdot.

Also just as bad are those touch machines that also come with someone who holds a gun to your head and tells you to keep your hands of all alternative input devices. I'm sure all the machines we're talking about will be of that variety.

Mass adoption means a drop in price point.

We're talking hardware here, not software, not Windows. Try to stay on topic....oh...this is /. As you were.

It's nice to have there as an option if you want it, if you don't care for it, don't use it.

I've always wanted to say this....you must be new here

I heard that Duke Nukem Forever is going to feature in game AI that surpasses human intelligence and that it will indeed be shipping on a holographic disk.

You live in Soviet Russia right???

What if you randomised the virtual keyboard layout each time it was displayed?

No you can't. If IE is "uninstalled" explorer doesn't know how to handle a URL properly and (from my slightly dodgy memory) presents you with an error dialog.