I was a bit afraid of smudges too, but it's really not an issue. Under normal conditions, they're not visible while the screen is on. And when it gets too dirty, a touchscreen is much easier and safer to clean than a standard one.

As a power user, you probably use the keyboard most of the time and occasionaly a single mouse operation (like moving focus somewhere). For that, it's quite intuitive to tap.

>> It frustrates me that almost every Windows laptop with a nice screen is now touch.

As someone who's just started researching to buy my next laptop, I don't find that to be very true at all unless you're only looking at ultrabooks.

One of my almost-gotta-haves is a touch screen, and for any models with an HQ/HK level processor plus a discrete GPU, there only seem to be a handful of models with touch screens (and when they are there they are usually optional) at the highest end configurations.