For some reason, all the major OS makers seem to be hell bent on pushing tablet/smartphone style interfaces to the desktop. Microsoft has now done it, Ubuntu did it with Unity, and I’ve heard that Apple is considering using the same OS for their I-Whatevers and Macs as well.
http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=17065&news=Apple+iOS+iPhone+iPad+Mac+OS+X
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_%28user_interface%29
I guess the theory is to “dumb down” the interface for the average user. It makes things a giant pain in the hiney for anyone else.
In the first article above, the author makes a very good point that unfortunately, none of the OS makers seem to listen to:
“Desktop users might strain their arms and necks trying to handle multi-touch on a 27-inch display screen, he illustrated.”
It seems counterproductive to add touch to a desktop to me, except in limited circumstances. The more input methods you have, the more time is spent transitioning between them...such as taking your hand off the mouse to touch the screen, pulling your hands down from the screen to work the keyboard, etc.
Even so, my mother has a touch-screen laptop, as it is much easier to work with her neuropathy. But, that’s kind of an extreme example.
Heck, I sometimes get aggravated by having to pull my hand off the mouse to type something!
get start8 on windows 8 and you get the best of both worlds. You can download from stardock.