Soon, multi-touch will be standard on touchpads. I’m loving the feature on the Eee PC 1000H.
I’m guessing touchscreens will not likely be found on 7″ screens or higher anymore (Unless the screen is a table ). The added cost isn’t worth the extra utility.

Whether the touchscreen is more or less intuitive depends on the user’s experience.

I was just in the Apple Store last night when I saw a young lady walk up to an iMac and touched the screen trying to schedule an appointment. Only took her one touch to realize it isn’t touchscreen, but I imagined she saw the big icons and thought “must be like iPhone/iPod touch.”

Multi-touch works great for iPhone/iPod touch because it’s the fastest input method versus the traditional inputs for handhelds. On Windows Mobile and BB, you have to jump through menus to perform tasks or use directional buttons (or trackball) to scroll. On laptops, keyboard + mouse + keyboard shortcuts is more efficient than keyboard + mouse + multi-touch. But this will vary greatly depending on tasks and software.

just my 2 cents
dts

>> “You don’t see a lot of touchscreen notebooks because it is not intuitive to reach up and start touching the screen when there is a good keypad…” < <

For me, there is nothing more intuitive than touching the screen instead of using a touchpad or pointer stick. This is an incredibly natural form of interaction with a computer.

However, there are some practical limitations. My passive digitizer isn’t particularly accurate, and needs to be recalibrated every couple of days. Laptop hinges need to be firm enough to prevent the display from rotating back when touching the screen. Third, touchscreens are more expensive. And, finally, a touchscreen is a non-traditional interface and might be resisted by users purely because it requires a change in habits. These are all valid reasons for using touchpads or pointer sticks instead. But stating that touchscreens are not intuitive seems a little odd to me, especially from a company that sells so many different tablet PCs.

Chicken or egg. Hardware makers aren’t interested in multi-touch because there’s no software support. Software vendors aren’t spending money on multi-touch input because there’s minimal hardware support. This is why Microsoft had to roll out their own multi-touch machine. This is why N-Trig is pushing their own SDK. It’s also why Apple, which makes both software and hardware, is the only one that has capitalized on multi-touch. Until the different parties come together on this issue, Apple will continue to own multi-touch input.