I am investigating how to differentiate tablets with Windows 8 and other devices. According to this doc http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/hh869301%28v=vs.85%29.aspx there should be "Touch" token in UserAgent in tablets with Windows.
But I am worried, will laptops with touchscreen also have this token in UserAgent. Unfortunately, do not have such device and test in myself.
Can someone please confirm that this "Touch" token is used in Internet Explorer for tablets and mobile phones only?
OK so I think you created a diversion for some here, you are not trying to detect touch per se as much as you want to detect if a device is a tablet or desktop. As I stated earlier in my comment you should not use any user agent string to do feature detection, ever. Detect the features directly.
FWIW here is how I detect touch support in DeepTissue :
Notice how I detect pointer events first then fall back to other input modality APIs?
On to what I think the essence of your question really is, how can I design an interface that is optimized for legacy desktops and modern touch enabled devices? This is where you need to tap that artistic part of your mind and meld it with valuable UX research by folks like Jacob Nielson on what works and what does not work. As you have seen Microsoft, Google and Apple all struggle with this same question it is not easy to answer. My advice, based on lots of experience, is to create a simple, responsive UI and grow from that. Start mobile first and design up from there. Remember, if it works with fat fingers then it will work with a mouse pointer. Touch is a direct input modality, where a mouse in indirect, so the experience is slightly different.
Make all your data actionable. This means instead of a small touch target with an anchor wrapped around text make the anchor wrap around the product photo. Make sure there is enough padding within the anchor to make the touch targets easier to hit and make sure there are margins between adjacent targets to reduce errors.
This is not an easy question to answer with an exact science because each application has its own character or personality. Users vary, etc. But one thing is for sure touch is quickly replacing non-touch devices and you need to account for that in any application design.