Re: I find them detestable
Don't touch it then, it's not compulsory on a laptop. Seems a bit weird that a capability you don't have to use provokes that reaction.
I was given a Lenovo laptop with a touch screen by work a while ago and, though initially indifferent, I grew to like it. "See the thing you want to activate, poke the thing you want to activate", is much more direct than "See the thing you want to activate, move the pointer to see where it is, guide it to the thing you want to activate, poke the thing you want to activate". It still works fine with keyboard and touchpad or external mouse. (And it folds back to use like a tablet, which Windows 8.1 then fails miserably at....)