What's the problem with additional functionality on a laptop screen?

Nothing. I retroffited a soda fountain on mine.

Well if it as light as the increased weight from the addition of a touchscreen, I wouldn't mind having two!

However on a serious note, its not as bad as you think. Just have to get used to it and once you do that, there won't be a going back. Think of it as something that is supposed to complement your existing workflow and not as something that would replace it. You know like have a voice assistant on your phone, you don't have to yell everything at it, just some quick look ups.

I disagree, strongly. It is precisely as bad as he thinks, and what makes it worse is that it damages the viability of a pen-based workflow (which I am in favor of, because I do a lot of visual stuff and I use OneNote quite a bit).

I want to be able to disable it entirely and not smudge the crap out of a screen I'm trying to work on, but it's effectively impossible and when you do disable it it all falls back to keyboard controls and leaves you with a garbage pen exeprience.

Yeah, who wants a touch screen on a laptop that converts into a tablet? That's just crazy. Man, fuck those people for adding functionality that I don't even have to use in laptop mode, but which is essential in tablet mode.

I don't want a touch-screen on a tablet, either, because I don't want fingerprints on it when I'm reading on it. Which is why my Surface Pro 3 is essentially only a laptop, because using Windows 8.1 (and 10) in pen-only mode is unpleasant and slow.

I'd say the same about a phone, but I don't spend my day staring at my phone.

Can't say I've had the same experience. On all of my touch devices, I can only see the fingerprints if the screen is off and if it bothers me at that point, I just wipe it off.

Given the prevalence of touch devices these days, I'm surprised that I don't hear this complaint very often.

I don't mind a touch screen on an iPad. But my Surface attracts fingerprints like nothing else (I have generally oily fingertips--it's not a function of washing, it manifests very shortly after I wash my hands), and it's really hard to keep it clean. If I use it for a full day, I probably wipe it down six or seven times. It's super distracting when I'm writing code or something.