Because on a laptop, where you are going to use the keyboard, it’s just easier to use a mouse. Raising your arms to touch the screen is less ergonomic than just reaching for a mouse or trackpad.

As I see it, touch screens are not the best thing for productivity. If you have to keep your hands raised in the air for a long time, you will get tired. Unlike having to rest on the table or keyboard.

So even if you add a touchscreen to a laptop, you won’t use it much so it is smarter not to put it in the first places. Smartphone and tablets are not productivity tools. You use them with too fingers at most, for mostly consuming media or casual chats on the smartphone.

I am not sure you can comfortably do programming work or some heavy excel editing or whatever exclusively on touch screen (hands raised in the air and/or extreme hunchback)

At previous place of work, they provided dell XPS with touchscreens or convertibles to executves and directors. I rarely seen them use the touchscreen while working even if they knew of the feature. It was mostly occasional scrolling, clicking the start menu, or minor things like that.

I also guess that there isn’t a sufficiently high demand for it.

I have a touchscreen on my Thinkpad and I often forget it’s there.

I think, it’s to make them cheaper.

Honestly I hate touchscreens so much lol. So many of the computers at my work place have touch screens, and it drives me crazy because, I’m often trying to explain to someone OK click here (then my fingernail grazes the screen and clicks it for them)… crap I wanted you to do that so you’d actually learn.

That and then actually using it. It’s imprecise as hell, and to add to the annoyance, you can’t quite tell where you are clicking because, your finger is blocking what you are touching.

Generally speaking the first thing I do is disable the thing if I get a computer with one.

I have a laptop where the keyboard can flip around and I can use it as a tablet. When I flip the keyboard around to use as a stand to watch stuff I often use the touchscreen functionality. Outside of that, I hardly ever touch the screen. I think when there’s a keyboard or mouse it’s the preferred form of input.

I’ve been helping code this site for the last year or so on an android tablet ( I code using remote vim so why not ). I got tired of waiting for arm / risc laptops, wanted some good battery life, and to ditch the mouse too.

Because when using touchscreens, you need to press against something. Using touchscreens on laptops would only result in tilting the screen further back, because that’s how they’re made: to be easilly flipped up or down.

That’s like asking why touchscreen TVs are not mainstream. There is different devices for different purposes. Most people that buy a laptop need the keyboard and use it as a desktop. If a person wants or needs a laptop with touchscreen they either buy the niche models that exist (2-1 laptops) or they use a tablet since that’s the main intended use. Otherwise it will be a waste of resources for a feature most laptop users wont be using enough.

I have touchscreen on my laptop. It works great with Linux. I’m suprised more people don’t want one.

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Well if you want touchscreens for doing stuff quick, keyboard shortcuts do the trick even better than touchscreens in my opinion.

Because they are useless and uncomfortable