N-Trig Initiative: A Call for Support

Posted by | 12/01/2009 | 10 Comments

After taking some heat for “overdoing” the Dell Latitude XT multi-touch driver hostage saga, Warner opted to cut the front page pressure once some progress has been made. But all was not yet settled and behind-the-scenes efforts aren’t enough for our forum members who are still not seeing the support they paid for, particularly in the case of the ultra-expensive XT.

Veteran member Steve Seto and moderator Sharon (sbtablet) are answering the call to arms and rallying the troops with their N-Trig Initiative. Their efforts were spurred by one forum member in particular, CajunAzn, who has posted a warning about the latest N-Trig drivers and laying out the problems in the whole situation. Tremendous work being shown by all.

The cause is simple and civil: document the problems, gather the data, and present it to Dell, HP, and N-Trig. Sharon has started an official wish list, including indisputable proof from forum member miralles, that the current drivers just aren’t cutting it.

N-TrigIssueI don’t know how anyone can read this, or rather try to read this, and think anyone is overstating the problem. Please share your experiences and support on the wish list.

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Category: Software

About the Author (Author Profile)

My name is Mark Sumimoto; I am Sumocat. I dabble in all areas of mobile computing, but my focus is Windows-based Tablet PCs and pen input. They’ve been part of my arsenal since 2004, and I’m proud to have pioneered the field of ink blogging, earning a spot as a Microsoft MVP for Touch and Tablets in the process. My current tools include a Fujitsu Lifebook T900, TEGA v2, and iPhone 4. Email me: sumocat [at] notebooks.com
  • Travis

    Why don’t people with the affected tablets just demand a refund from Dell?

  • Dan S.

    They can’t, because it’s their choice to do an upgrade.

  • Eve

    so grateful for Wacom, after reading abt all this N-trig drama for the last yr or so, I would never consider buying anything with one of their digitizers installed!!

  • Travis

    Oh. I thought the faulty N-Trig came on the tablet from Dell.

  • Joe

    Has anyone actually been able to duplicate the weird results that that poster had? I’m sure he’s telling the truth, but there could be a million different factors. I’ve never seen anything like that in Windows 7 on my N-trig powered Dell XT, though, and I haven’t seen any other poster with the same issue.

    Seems more like a freak occurrence than a major issue (or maybe limited to the tx2?)

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m nowhere near saying the N-trig drivers are perfect, but honestly, they’re making a lot of progress considering they had to rewrite the drivers pretty much from scratch for Windows 7. I wish they kept us more updated on the status, but each beta increment has made huge improvements.

  • sbtablet

    The frustrating thing is, even with the issues, I LOVE my Dell XT. When it’s working, which for me is most of the time, the touch and pen experience are both really terrific. It’s so good when it’s good, and some of the problems, such as touch dropping out, just seem like they ought to be readily fixable. I don’t expect cutting edge technology to be perfect, but I do expect to see updates and progress.

  • Travis

    Why do you put up with it? You are just enabling Dell to continue to put garbage on the market.

  • Osiris

    I havent touched my XT in a while, the other week I finally decided to test a final version of Win7 on it. Overall I found the initial inking experience to be noticably better than Vista and pretty cruisy.

    Since I fired up the XT to try some multi-touch stuff, I installed the latest NTrig drivers. Whilst my experience is not as bad as the pic in this news article, you do notice significant degradation of the inking if you write at a normal pace. I have found writing slower to help but overall thats kind of pointless.

    Seems its really a choice between Inking or M/T. I dont recall the two functions being seperated when I purchased my XT, I was just told to hold my breath for ever improving Ntrig drivers and Win7….yep thats panned out well.

    Like one of the posters above, I would touch Ntrig again, Wacom or bust. Good on the GBM team for pursing this crap too, dont let the bastards get away with this shite.

  • sbtablet

    @Travis,

    Unfortunately, I have a pretty limited budget for electronics. My refurb XT is my laptop computer for the next several years. I use ink for grading and returning student papers, and for me, the Dell is quite reliable in that area. I personally don’t use touch nearly as much as ink, so touch dropping out is more an annoyance than a huge problem.

  • XT User

    Still unclear to me that CajunAzn has the latest (October) n-trig drivers on his XT before he posted his comments. Everyone is using the Win 7 Driver bundle package 2.172 – right?

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