I can't imagine getting real work done on a touch device. Touch device implies it's screen is small enough to hold in one hand. In other words, the screen is too small to spread a few browser windows on. Touch implies discouraging the use of a mouse. Fingers are fuzzy and annoying for precise selection, and onscreen keyboards suck. By the time you've gotten an external keyboard and mouse to work around this, you no longer have a touch device.
I can't imagine buying a touch device for work. I wouldn't object to getting one to watch movies or read books on.
I guess this is why hybrid devices like surface exist.
The question is whether the future is to have a single "do everything" device like a Surface laptop or several discreet pieces of hardware for different jobs.
People with high disposable incomes don't seem to have any problem owning a PC/Mac desktop , a laptop , a tablet , a smartphone as well as several games consoles and other gadgets. Assuming you already have an iPad I don't see any huge benefit to having a Windows 8 laptop over a Windows 7 one.
I know people who bought touchscreen monitors to run Windows 7, in combination to keyboard and mice. They found these a novelty for the first few days but they never really use the touch functionality.
Anything that size will give me arm fatigue using the touch in any meaningful way. For occasional interaction, it's fine, but standing in front of it all day, the touch will mostly get ignored.
After wrangling with some HP TouchSmarts, I agree. The hitboxes suck, the on-screen keyboard is fatiguing after a few sentences, and playing a game with touch only sounds like work.
Eventually you forget that your PC has a touchscreen. Even when you do remember that you can just jab something with your finger, your internal context-switching brain-lobe-thing tells you to not bother because the next few micro-tasks will involve the keyboard and mouse anyway.
I can't imagine buying a touch device for work. I wouldn't object to getting one to watch movies or read books on.