Connect with us

Hardware

Dell Latitude XT Drivers Held Hostage: Day 7

Published

on

robhostageWell, the saga continues and at least today we have some new information. Although I’m not sure this is going to make any Dell Latitude XT Tablet PC users happy.

From his undisclosed prison cell Rob Bushway forwarded me this series of tweets from RichardatDell. From the looks of things, Latitude XT owners are now working with “legacy hardware.” Not good, given the context that the Latitude XT was the first multi-touch Tablet PC. But, I imagine that there are all sorts of issues not only with Dell, but with N-Trig as well.

UPDATE: RichardatDell responded in the comments with this:

we appreciate the feedback and have specific points you raised with teams at Dell who are working hard on various updates. The nTrig touchscreen is a matter we are aware of and one where the firmware has to be updated and then install new driver. Our teams are working on XT2 matters and will finish up the XT drivers shortly.

Screen shot 2009-10-28 at 11.26.55 AM

12 Comments

12 Comments

  1. Antimatter

    10/28/2009 at 12:07 pm

    I’m sorry, legacy platform? That is NOT an acceptable answer. We payed good money for this system, and in a year they release a new model and simply stop supporting the old one? That’s just not a good way to do business.

    The ONLY reason I chose this tablet over others was the screen. Now many other tablets have multi touch capacitive screens, and if this is how Dell supports their systems I don’t think I’ll be buying them again.

  2. Regular Reader

    10/28/2009 at 12:18 pm

    Rob please ask Richard at Dell to define what Dell means by “legacy system.”

    My organization has about 250 dell machines include a number of XT tablets. It will be valuable to hear his exact definition.

    If legacy system means no support, I agree with Antimatter, unacceptable…..

  3. Rob

    10/28/2009 at 12:29 pm

    I pointed Richard to this article – my understanding by his tweet is that legacy means that there will be no win 7 support. I’m not sure what means for the n-trig drivers…

  4. Rob

    10/28/2009 at 12:56 pm

    per @RichardATDell’s suggestion, I put this issue up on IdeaStorm – vote it up / promote it / discuss there, too – make your voice heard in a forum that I guess Dell monitors closely. The idea that we should have to do this for Dell to support their first multi-touch system on Windows 7 is ludicrous, but I’ll play the game to bring about change.

    https://bit.ly/eqqyj

  5. Coronado

    10/28/2009 at 1:17 pm

    This is absolutely ridiculous. 1 year old and it’s “legacy hardware?”

    Oh, and just to warn anyone reading this: do NOT dual boot Vista and Windows 7 if you load the N-Trig MTM drivers in 7. Once you boot back into Vista, Touch is broken. And if you reinstall the Vista drivers without uninstalling the 7 drivers, it kills the firmware in the digitizer and CANNOT be fixed. If you do this, Dell has to replace the screen on the XT. No reload of any OS (Vista, 7, Linux) will fix it, and nothing sees it as a USB device anymore. First hand experience here…

  6. richardatdell

    10/28/2009 at 1:20 pm

    Rob,

    we appreciate the feedback and have specific points you raised with teams at Dell who are working hard on various updates. The nTrig touchscreen is a matter we are aware of and one where the firmware has to be updated and then install new driver. Our teams are working on XT2 matters and will finish up the XT drivers shortly.

  7. Rob

    10/28/2009 at 4:25 pm

    thanks Richard…

  8. Marc

    10/28/2009 at 4:27 pm

    Id just like to say Thanks Rob for beingour voice on this one. its been a frustrating run trying to work this out

  9. Billy Blanks

    10/28/2009 at 7:15 pm

    Guys come on, Dell has better things to do, they just release a rugged XT2. So let’s support them and get rid of our legacy XT’s and give them $5000 for their new supported product. You are guarenteed these will last until 2010 until they stop supporting these when the XT3 comes out :).

    Thanks for listening,
    Billy Blanks!

  10. Corey Gilmore

    10/28/2009 at 8:54 pm

    It’s interesting that there are still issues with the XT2 that are holding up the driver development/certification for the XT. Sure Windows 7 just became publicly available a few days ago, but RTM was on July 22 and it was on MSDN and Technet by August 6. 3 month turnaround isn’t terribly inspiring.

    Also, like I mentioned on IdeaStorm (https://bit.ly/eqqyj), this is a business laptop. Windows 7 Enterprise was available for volume license customers (eg, businesses) on August 7.

  11. JD

    10/29/2009 at 5:34 am

    I wonder if this is what is also holding up HP as well. I bought a brand new (as in just in the stores) HP Touchsmart tx2-1275dx notebook in July and qualified for a free upgrade to Windows 7. Yesterday I got an email from HP saying that the updgrade disks will not be mailed until the middle of November and I may not receive them until the end of November. Excuse me. They have had months to prepare and they are not ready.

  12. unam

    11/06/2009 at 9:06 am

    i am thinking of dumping my XT .. if i dont get windows 7 drivers.. any time soon.. thank you dell… i work hard for my money…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.