Few laptops today ship with touch-enabled displays, and there's no guarantee that a convertible tablet-style PC designed for Windows 7 touch will have full ten-point multitouch. Indeed, most of the touch-enabled laptops from the Windows 7 era offer only two-point multitouch. But when Windows 8 launches in October, we'll see a large number of laptops with built-in ten-point multitouch, ranging from traditional clamshell laptops to convertible-style units with detachable displays that can function independently as tablets.

If you need a laptop right now, try to track down a system that has a trackpad with both ten-point touch and edge detection. A touchpad with edge detection is ready for Windows 8. Swiping in will bring up the charms bar, for example. Two systems that are already shipping today with ten-point touch and edge detection are the and the .

If you need to replace a traditional, high-performance tower PC, you don't need to be greatly concerned with its specific Windows 8 capability. You should, however, spec your new tower with a DirectX 11.1 GPU and possibly a mouse such as Microsoft's Touch Mouse. On the other hand, if you plan to pick up an all-in-one PC, various systems are already shipping with ten-point multitouch, including the .