Dell and N-Trig: I’ve Had It
In many ways, the Dell Latitude XT Tablet PC has become one of my favorite Tablet PCs. It is very thin, light, has ample room on the wrist pad for typing, has a scroll wheel, and is generally pleasant to use in portrait mode. It goes to sleep and resumes very quickly. It is also the only tablet pc on the market that is multi-touch capable.
However, along with a lot of users in our forums, I’ve reached the end of the road with the N-Trig digitizer issues. I’ve lost track of how many different issues there are, as one issue bleeds into another. More times than not, whenever I reboot, I’ll get N-Trig digitizer not found errors or applet loading errors, which render the auto and dual mode useless. The digitizer will only start working again after consecutive reboots. In addition, I still have problems coming out of standby with the digitizer accidentally clicking items while the pen is just hovering. In addition to the digitizer issues, I still have a recurring problem with my wireless card – it’ll just stop working and the only thing that will turn it back on is a reboot.
I’ve worked with Dell engineering support, solicited input in our forums on their behalf, removed registry keys, removed iTunes, fiddled with all kinds of potential USB conflicts, and more. They have reassured me that they are working on the problem. However, it has been almost seven months since I’ve had the Dell Latitude XT and most of my original problems with the XT are still there. I was certainly expecting to deal with some first generation issues for a couple of months, but this is getting out of hand. Even though the Latitude XT has the only multi-touch Tablet PC on the market, I’ve finally realized that this digitizer and its drivers are not ready for prime time.
Dell and N-Trig: These problems need to be addressed ASAP and there needs to be some public dialogue between Dell, N-Trig, and your users about what is going on and when we can expect resolution. Dell customers: I encourage you to contact customer support and let your voices be heard. Until these issues are addressed and fixed, I cannot recommend to anyone that they purchase the Latitude XT Tablet PC.
Category: Editorials, Featured, Hardware
I actually bought that for vista 64 bit. Long story about trying to get the tablet working with vista 64bit. No dell support for that OS. Now I have Vista 32 bit on my XT. I believe when I was working with it on 64 bit vista I was still having the same issues with it only recognizing my prints half the time and it did not support preboot authentication either.
Do not boot up Vista using the base station, Ntrig will always fail, rather boot up on battery and then click into the station. Video drivers are awful I agree and the Verizon card requires 3 x access one after the other before it recognizes the login.
Centrino is about a gig short as the system is very slow and BSD happens once a week, 3rd unit so its not a hardware issue.
As much as I hate to admit it was a wasted 4k+ and we bought 3!!!!!!!!
Other then that how did you like the play Mrs Lincoln
Hey Rob,
Our company has 3 XTs. 2 Of them have faulty NTRIG screens. FYI, I recently received a display replacement from Dell with hardware build of A01. Works now! The other unit I noticed worked when I “over rotated” the screen counter clockwise. Then it recognized the digitizer as seen in device manager. Something tells me it’s a loose/wire/circuit board issue???
@bsmithers: XP SP3 also knocked out my screen rotation. It can be readily fixed by installing the Radeon Xpress 1250 driver from Windows Update.
While THAT issue is fixed for me, I also have some beef with the N-Trig digitizer. It seems that one particular area of the screen is very insensitive to the pen but works fine by touch. In that part of the screen I cannot for the life of me write a word using Windows Journal without the ink disconnecting randomly. It feels a little like writing using a pen that is drying out and does not matter how much pressure I apply. Interestingly, writing on other parts of the screen seem to work just fine…
@hchen, I also have a strip on the screen where touch works intermittently yet the pen works fine. I have to be careful dragging anything across this area using touch.
Reading through many of the comments here and Engadget, it seems like there are quite a few people experiencing various problems with Vista AND XP. I wonder if the differentiator is how often people actually use touch or use the pen. If you don’t use them much, I can see where people might be able to configure there system so things look just fine. I’m a heavy Tablet-feature user, so I don’t fall into this group. I wonder if that’s the difference going on here.
OS – Vista
multi-touch drivers installed
heavy pen and touch user
problems: N-Trig not detect problem, intermittent dead strip where touch doesn’t work, false triggers of pen, ink sometimes “breaks” while using pen, intermittent multi-touch gestures working
I still hold out hope that Windows 7 will get around some of these issues :-)
I have an XT running vista and I haven’t had any of the problems mentioned…I wonder if it’s because I started with a clean copy of vista and then installed only the stuff I needed (ie. I don’t have the finger print reader and some other stuff installed).
clean installs seem to be a recurring theme here….hmm….might be worth trying, but it will certainly be painful if it doesn’t work. All of these comments clearly show something is definitely amiss with the drivers and the other software, though.
Recommendation for those of you experiencing lost “digitizer” or “can’t find device” or similar errors:
Try exerting some twisting force just enough to flex the screen a bit. Do this as you rotate the screen counterclockwise. You might be surprised to see the digitizer reappear.
I’ve had similar issues with Vista. I’ve installed XP and haven’t experienced those issues in about 2 months….knock on wood!
I’ve been using the fingerprint reader, the multi-touch driver (with Dell Vista build) and mainly using in tablet mode (in and out of standby) for the last few months without a hitch hopefully these are teething issues to be fixed with the XT2 due soon.
I have intermittent digitizer issues as well. I bought the XT with the hope that I could sketch on it, but the ink seems to skip even with a lot of pressure. When I attempt to use the writing recognition and it skips, the resulting marks look like periods (and ends up inserting periods). My drawings always have little dots from the ink skipping.
If anybody has any tips on how to fix this, let me know please!!! I’ve turned off all of XP’s eye candy for maximum performance, but it didn’t seem to make much of a difference.
everyone – review this:
http://www.gottabemobile.com/2008/10/26/getting-close-to-solve-dell-xt-digitizer-issues/
Hello everyone, im having the latitude xt but the fingerprint is not working ,, its strong possible that the driver is abscent, and i couldnt find it on net ,, so please can someone help me finding it or just give me the link so that i can download it ,, thx in advance
Hello everyone, im having the latitude xt but the fingerprint is not working ,, its strong possible that the driver is abscent, and i couldnt find it on net ,, so please can someone help me finding it or just give me the link so that i can download it ,, thx in advance …
mahdi – go to support.dell.com
Have no problem with N-Trig seems to be working fine with my Vista machine. Would be a positive user apart from two issues 1.battery life seem to get about 1.5 hrs with the normal battery and 3 hrs with the slice 2. ATI graphics driver seems to make the system crash and am unable to get the driver from dell support to install. C
I’ve had mine for about 3 months now, and the n-trig crapout/crash on boot is very frequent. There is also an annoying behavior when the digitizer occasionally freaks out, issuing random clicks in the upper right of the screen (which usually result in me being asked if I want to delete my Recycle Bin) Hard drive often makes these awful clicking sounds, like the heads are slamming into the case (not the disks) repeatedly. Video drivers are crap, and the system can never seem to figure out when it is connected to an external display and when it isn’t.
I've had mine for 4 months clean install of vista. It worked but slow and multi-touch was weak with frequent errors. I use the fingerprint reader app built into bios and no password on windows login make it a somewhat fast log-on. Now I install did a clean install of windows7. Works great with win7 drivers from ntrig. Full multi-touch in windows paint with ten finger+ recognition. Everything in windows 7 is touch ready. I had to do some hacks to get the aero shake and superbar feature to work.
I have a XT and it has been giving me a lot of problems: blue screen, sudden restart, black screen with no display, etc. These are just the issues in addition to the digitizer one other people are talking about. Dell replaced my hard drive but it is still giving me problems. BTW, I have a clean install of Vista.
try removing java access bridge
hmmm, this is an interesting post. i have had mine for more than a few weeks now and i love it. i had a toshiba r400 before this, and an hp 2710p before that and a fujitsu p1610, x60 and a fujitsu T series before that … the dell xt is by far the best tablet pc amongst all the ones i have ever used.
i did have problems with the drivers, but i moved to the WDDM microsoft's drivers on my second day and the thing has never crashed ever since. you may want to try that.
I got me a xt running vista 32bit sp1. Digitizer hasn’t given me any problems but the pen buttons don’t work and then there is…blue screens, the fingerprint reader doesn’t work and I have a verizon usb card that conflicts with something in there. No wireless right now for me. Battery life is a real disapointment. Does the base work well?
I bought two XT tablets for me and my brother. It is horror! Do not buy it. Dell will not solve your problems. And the problems are numerous. You can read my story on: http://www.marcnotenboom.com/?p=31
Hi Rob,
I received an XT as part of a trial for a hospital system. We were inclined to go with it for a grant funded project employing tablets in the medical setting for patient and trainee physician education. However the problems you mentioned, and we have experienced, caused us to decide against it.
I recently did a clean install. Only the Dell drivers and the notebook system software, then a cisco VPN. However when I added Itunes, I got the Ntrig error (yes I have the base). I will say that it does work much more quickly now.
Unfortunately I am wedded to itunes as I have an iphone.
I travel to a number of hosptials around the world and carry my Dell Tablet. I get a lot of questions about it and recommend against Dell’s iteration.