[anamardoll]

I think maybe there's a disconnect between two sets of people that have been accidentally represented in a single "some touch, some buttons" group.

There's the "buttons are for special situations" group. This group would use touch screen all the time, but can't because sometimes they have chicken grease or Cheetos dust on their hands and prefer to use buttons in those cases. Or sometimes they read one-handed, and physical buttons are (generally) more supportive of that. So these groups would be fine with an all-touch screen except that Real Life interferes with that dream.

Then there's the "buttons are for special functions" group. This group actually wants dedicated buttons for things that they can't/won't/don't use touch screens for. This would include people who prefer hard keyboards to soft ones (fair enough if you're typing by feel -- soft keyboards are tricky for typing by feel), people who prefer a dedicated "back" button to searching for one on the screen, and people who prefer page buttons to page swipes for ergonomic reasons. These people are different from the first group, because they don't want buttons because they are a sad necessity in an imperfect world; they want buttons because they prefer buttons for certain things. (They still like touch screens for other functions, though, so they couldn't select the "no touchy!" option on the poll.)

I think we're seeing both of these groups represented in the "middle ground" portion of the poll. For instance, I voted "I like touchscreen, but with physical page-turn buttons." but I really, really LIKE buttons.

I just got a Sony 950 and -- for me -- it's much more intuitive to have dedicated buttons for book options and zooming rather than the Nook Color buttons that popped up every time I touched the center of the screen. I didn't like that particular touch interface at all.

So while I like touch screen for some functions, I prefer buttons for others. I think that stance is a little different from some people saying "I voted the second option, but really just because page buttons are a necessary evil for the way I use the device." Maybe that's the source of the disconnect here?