Gestures like swiping and pinch-to-zoom are good if you don't have anything else as an input method. If you have lots of physical buttons available anyway, I prefer to use those instead. E.g. map some buttons to zoom-in/zoom-out, use dpad and pgup/pgdn to scroll around, etc. Gestures are cool and intuitive and all, but e.g. when I'm browsing a website, I like to use physical buttons to navigate (e.g. scrollwheel, which could be mapped to right nub; pageup/pagedown/home/end) so I can avoid having to touch the screen. If you have to touch the screen for navigation, 1) your finger(s) or stylus gets between your eyes and the screen, so you can't see part of the screen, 2) you can get your screen dirty, and 3) you might accidentally click a link.
I don't really like trackpads either. A stylus or normal (optical) mouse is still the best way imo to move a mouse cursor, in terms of accuracy and speed. Nubs are OK in terms of accuracy but a bit slower than a real mouse and much slower than a stylus. (I guess you could also make it behave fast and inaccurate)
On my laptop I never use the trackpad. I sometimes use its nub, and most of the time I plug in a mouse and use that.
On my Pandora I try to do most things with the keyboard. If I need to do a few clicks, I use the nubs. If I need to do more, I use the stylus. But typically I just use the keyboard - Pandora button to open the menu, dpad to select something, alt-tab to switch between windows, ctrl-pgup/pgdown to switch between terminal tabs, etc. With the improved ICP2 keyboard, the Pandora 2 will have an even better keyboard experience - e.g. easier alt-tabbing with a dedicated tab key, etc.
I could very well live with a Pandora 2 that doesn't have any touch at all in its screen. If it does need to have touch, then I think accuracy and pressure sensitivity are much more important than multi-touch. There just is no real use for multi-touch except for gestures, on-screen keyboards and a handful of games like "cut the ropes". If you have a real keyboard, most of the reasons for needing multi-touch kind of evaporate.
I don't really like trackpads either. A stylus or normal (optical) mouse is still the best way imo to move a mouse cursor, in terms of accuracy and speed. Nubs are OK in terms of accuracy but a bit slower than a real mouse and much slower than a stylus. (I guess you could also make it behave fast and inaccurate)
On my laptop I never use the trackpad. I sometimes use its nub, and most of the time I plug in a mouse and use that.
On my Pandora I try to do most things with the keyboard. If I need to do a few clicks, I use the nubs. If I need to do more, I use the stylus. But typically I just use the keyboard - Pandora button to open the menu, dpad to select something, alt-tab to switch between windows, ctrl-pgup/pgdown to switch between terminal tabs, etc. With the improved ICP2 keyboard, the Pandora 2 will have an even better keyboard experience - e.g. easier alt-tabbing with a dedicated tab key, etc.
I could very well live with a Pandora 2 that doesn't have any touch at all in its screen. If it does need to have touch, then I think accuracy and pressure sensitivity are much more important than multi-touch. There just is no real use for multi-touch except for gestures, on-screen keyboards and a handful of games like "cut the ropes". If you have a real keyboard, most of the reasons for needing multi-touch kind of evaporate.
