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GBM InkShow: Windows 7 and N-Trig Pre-Beta Multi-Touch Demo

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image When N-Trig released their Windows 7 multi-touch drivers today, it was all I could do to finish up some needed work and keep focused on the task at hand. Soon enough, though, I had an opportunity to install the new drivers on my Latitude XT Tablet PC running Windows 7 and record this short InkShow demo.

As you’ll see, things are bit rough at this pre-beta stage and not near as polished as many, like myself, had hoped. The experience is not very consistent and can be a quite jerky. It is not a smooth experience at all.   That said, it is important for all of us to remember that this is a pre-beta Windows 7 install running pre-beta N-Trig multi-touch drivers. There is a long ways to go between now and the end of 2009.

 

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17 Comments

17 Comments

  1. Joe

    11/06/2008 at 9:56 pm

    The one thing you didn’t show which I thought was actually sort of neat is how you can use multiple fingers in Paint with these drivers, if you don’t select the pencil tool but a paintbrush instead.

  2. Rob

    11/06/2008 at 10:02 pm

    I agree, I should have shown that – it is a neat feature

  3. Michael Milne

    11/07/2008 at 8:43 am

    Interesting, but will not sell more people on touch/handwriting. Can see this being useful for looking at a large number of photos for comparison if on a large screen (ie photo journalists or Radiologists) – but cost to usefullness ratio will be too high for at least 5 years after Windows 7 and a stable release.

  4. matt

    11/07/2008 at 10:33 am

    I pitty the fools.

  5. Rob

    11/07/2008 at 11:43 am

    That was a good video demo but I feel it is not really fair or accurate since the software is obviously not far along in the demo. It’s like going to a buying a new car before it’s even painted and saying you don’t like the color. Regardless, still a good video.

  6. Rob Bushway

    11/07/2008 at 11:57 am

    Totally understand your point, but releasing software and drivers, even as pre-beta, should be a bit more polished than it is right now. My concern is that the next year will be put in to addressing bugs like these and not on raising the level of experience beyond what we are seeing here.

  7. Siggi

    11/07/2008 at 2:43 pm

    “We don’t want to see celebrities undressed”
    Waaaaa!?!?!

  8. Michiel van der Blonk

    11/07/2008 at 7:51 pm

    I’d like to see Microsoft’s demo, your’s feels like you just didn’t have the driver configured correctly or something. Why would they release it if they hadn’t tried it themselves? Anyway, why would I want a touch screen, that gets all dirty? I just want my webcam to recognize all those gestures.

  9. Ben

    11/07/2008 at 8:22 pm

    Well, if you’re really picky about dirty screens, then maybe a touchscreen isn’t right for you. I, however, want one.

    One thing this video shows is that touch requires large, finger-friendly UI elements. Look at all the trouble Rob had clicking on the small IE buttons.

    This is also a concern of mine, to a lesser degree, with pen-input. Sometimes it’s difficult to navigate small menus. I can only hope MS will address this.

  10. Medic

    11/08/2008 at 5:34 am

    Will the gesutres supported by Ntrig also be supported in the Windows 7 drivers. If the gestures are more polished I hope Lenovo is watching. I would very much like to see this on the X200 tablet!

    @Michiel:
    -Touch screen has come quite a long way with regard to finger smudges. Backlighting, screenprotectors and special touch screens have made it possible to overcome these issues, and small screen wipes are light and portable these days.
    -It would be quite a lot of fun to manipulate the webcam zoom and shotangles with the touch gestures!:) But as Rob has demonstrated, perhaps still some work has to be performed on improving the response to reach customer experience satisfaction. Who knows it could be a driver compatibility issue, but I think this video now being on youtube as well, NTrig or MS must have already spotted Rob’s video to boost their efforts.

  11. Donnell

    11/08/2008 at 6:33 am

    What programs, other than picture viewer, support rotate?

    Is the picture album program shown at @1:22 of this link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pUQeq60G1M) available?

    Can anyone get Virtual Earth to work with multitouch? I just keep resizing my IE page.

    Once again, I’m glad this forum exists!

  12. Christopher

    11/08/2008 at 6:40 am

    Skip the first 3 minutes to actually see it in use.

  13. Rob

    11/08/2008 at 7:50 am

    @medic – yes, other windows 7 features should work as well.
    @donnell – if other programs are built to recognize the gesture, they will support it. right now, from what I can see, only the picture viewer in windows 7 supports it. But with the availablity of the SDK, it opens the support up to others.

  14. sipp11

    11/08/2008 at 11:18 am

    Good video; I thought it was not that bad until I had tried myself.

    Just hold the finger steadily, the cursor is jerky around. How could they put this to public? It’s just show how effortless they are. Yeah, it’s pre-beta!! just make it private if it was not even cooked.

    Just compare to Windows 7, it is not even public beta yet, but far more ready than N-trig have ever come. I’m afraid that N-trig won’t be ready in time.

  15. j

    11/08/2008 at 12:32 pm

    wow that looked horrible

  16. Linderman

    11/10/2008 at 3:27 am

    If I wanted ‘gestures’ – I would have gotten a macbook.

    1)Yes please do another video when the ‘Picture-Suru’ sample code and app get released by MS within the coming weeks

    2)and fingerpainting. to see how responsive and accurate that works.

    the point of onscreen multitouch is to give you extra precision and speed by WHERE you touch.
    [i thought gestures were just a little decoy to keep XT customers in good faith. Something that would get dropped quickly for the real deal, nothing anyone every took seriously]

  17. Ben

    11/13/2008 at 8:11 pm

    I just realized this from watching another win 7 touch and scrolling video, but i think there’s a good reason why the window was “pulled down” when Rob scrolled it. I think that’s visual feedback that you’re at the limits of the scrollbar.

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