During the era of Windows Vista and 7, just about every laptop sold to consumers where I live, from lower-end "multimedia" home PCs to higher-end machines, would have a swipe fingerprint sensor, where the user could swipe their finger to log on. Every single computer I purchased during that time had a fingerprint sensor, from the cheap $300 Pentium laptop to the more expensive machines (e.g. my VAIO Z series valued at around $2,000 at the time).
However, I've noticed that most consumer laptops sold these days no longer have any fingerprint sensor, not even high-end machines. The last time I visited a computer store, there was only one model that had a fingerprint sensor, and that wasn't a "swipe" sensor (it was a "tap and hold" sensor like the one found on smartphones like my Nexus 6P). From what I can tell, it was right around when manufacturers gravitated toward smaller form factors, right around the Windows 8 era, when this trend stopped.
Why don't consumer laptops feature a fingerprint sensor anymore, which used to be such a common feature earlier, with just about every laptop (other than small netbooks) featuring it?
And if the concern was that swipe sensors aren't secure enough, why isn't the smartphone-like "tap and hold" sensor more common?
[tag:laptop] [tag:fingerprint]