A laptop has some nice features, Gary has done such a good selling job that if I didn't own an MPP I'd probably use a laptop. But......... knowing what I know now and having owned an MPP for 2 years I prefer the MPP.
I use a foot pedal to turn pages and never use the touch screen at a gig. IT also has a feature called "record repeats and cuts" /"play repeats and cuts" that allow you to arrange multiple sheet songs in such a way that you never have to turn back a page, but instead just keep going forward all with the use of a foot pedal, no different from a sustain pedal on a piano.

If my MPP were to fail I can still use the proprietary FreeHand software that's installed on my laptop to view sheets stored on the MPP.