[Windows 8 General] MrKwatz:
I can't really understand where some of these arguments are coming from. I'll try to tell my take on the matter in an objective way.

Windows 8 is taking the OS in a different direction, but with compromises that have effects on both touch and generic kb/m combos. Since asking people to adapt is out of the question, MS has to design around both in order to prevent fragmentation of their software. This causes problems, like clashing UI design philosophies that are held by the touch and mouse environments where people who are used to doing everything one way have to use a touch-aware interface designed by some lazy dev who doesn't care about people using kb/m, and in the same sense, lazy devs who don't care about or adapt to the touch environment. It's a no-win scenario if people do not choose to adapt to new interface technologies.

I currently have a Thinkpad Tablet running android, with touch and N-Trig stylus support. This is good hardware, made for producing content. The software, though, is relatively junk. Android (Honeycomb) makes Windows seem incredibly stable. It doesn't just work. It is constrained. I can't do anything I want with it, because it is not user-supported and user-driven.

Here are three of the workflows I could see myself using with the influx of new hardware/software that is set to come out in the next year or two:

A slate running W8 on mild hardware with a (relatively) large 12"-13" screen, with a dock at home housing a keyboard and an external GPU for running photoshop, 3D applications, and games without having dedicated powerful hardware for running things like that smoothly, and draining battery, when it is not docked. The screen would need both capacitive touch and wacom-style pen input (because I do not want a media consumption machine, I am an artist/producer). But that same software would need an interface to be dynamic enough to let me use a kb/m fluidly when it's docked. A one-size fits all will not work in content-producing applications.

Then there's the transforming laptop. A good use of the keyboard/trackpad with the ability to use traditional input or touch wherever you are. This is a really dynamic way of solving the hardware problems, and I will certainly continue to look into these.

The desktop. It's got to change. It can't stay the way it is now. Monitor producers need to make capacitive panels and cameras standard (for eye tracking, kinect-like interfaces). Users need to have the additional interaction that touch gives with dynamic stands adjustable to any angle. If I ever feel like it would be more natural for me to reach up and touch something, I want to be able to do that.

I don't see why I should be constained to touch, kb/m, or stylus. I want to use whatever tools it takes to get a job done the best and fastest way possible. And that ranges wildly between applications. Windows is just a platform, it's the application devs who make the software that runs on it that have to make your experience worthwhile. If people just keep spouting that touch is terrible you will just be hurting your own experience and denouncing new technologies. We've had the same input method for the last... 30 years? Now that we have so many new methods of input, why should we not embrace it if it helps you make things better?

These are my views, anyway. I try to adapt, because I don't want to be stuck doing the same thing, I want to do anything that I want to do with whatever hardware path I choose. This is very difficult to design for, and I don't expect the experience to be perfected with the W8 beta, or with W8 at all.