[jonah]

I'm still not convinced that "touchscreen computers" will help with general purpose content creation.

I have yet to see how touching the screen will help me write software (or a word document for that matter) better or that my finger is precise enough to design with.

Content consumption, web browsing, social sharing, all that stuff sure. I have modern smartphone and a couple tablets - they're pretty awesome. But bringing extending the touchscreen paradigm to the machine I use to do "work" - I'm just not seeing it yet.

[forgottenpaswrd]

"I have yet to see how touching the screen will help me write software (or a word document for that matter) better or that my finger is precise enough to design with."

It will never do. Typing is just so much faster than touching. But it does not matter because: TALKING is much better than typing for textual data.

On the other hand, touching is so much better for edition of already introduced data, the only problem is that software is designed around keyboards, for example moving letters instead of words.

[dagw]

that my finger is precise enough to design with

So use a pen when you need precision. The designers I know that have Wacom cintiq screens love them to death.

[jonah]

The ones I know do too. That's a different interface paradigm though.

Pen is not suitable a general purpose pointing device to use in conjunction with any type of (onscreen or physical) keyboard.

* Tap on the screen to set carat * Put down pen * Type * Pick up pen * Click something else

Just no good.

For design / illustration pen is fantastic. You don't even need to have a Cintiq, a standard tablet works almost as well. I'll bet you money though, when most designers are doing other things, managing files, browsing the web, writing, etc. they put down the pen and pick up their mouse.