So how do these touch screens work anyway, like a second mouse? I have a friend who plays lots of RPGs and often wondered if you could game with a touchscreen. When you have to quickly select multiple targets with multiple spells and such there's a lot of mouse flailing trying to keep up, but if you could just click the screen that would be much faster and more efficient.
And for FPS games, could you just touch the screen to center your aim and fire at different enemies (hold your finger on the screen for continuous fire)? While still using the keyboard to move around? Could you still use your mouse somehow (two pointers maybe, or change the mouse movement/buttons to other uses?), or does the screen simply replace it (like mice on laptops where the touch pad just fights it)?
How durable are these things, can they take a good stab or do you have to treat them carefully? Do they scratch easy (can they tolerate "swiping", since they're plastic)? How accurate are they (any jumpiness, ghost touches, issues with clicking on fast moving or small items, can they handle rapid touch inputs all over the screen)? Any idea what the response time might be on something like this? Do touch screens have additional lag over a similar model without touch? IPS panels are usually the slowest LCDs right? So would this automatically make it unsuitable for any kind of gaming?
I strongly prefer my high end CRT over most any LCD I've seen thus far (and 4:3 FTW!), but the the higher quality of an IPS with 19x12 at 85Hz (can it really do it, or is that just a theoretical max that's unusable or may damage the unit?) along with the touch capabilities may convince me to get one or two if I don't miss the deal.
Edit:
Could this also be used in clone mode and simply as an input device (like a giant touch pad but you can look down to see what your clicking on)? I think that could be useful when using a larger display (50-100") as your main monitor and you need to sit further back.