My Message To The HP CEO

Last year I purchased an HP TouchSmart Tx2-1020us Notebook PC, as I'm a fan of the convertible Tablet PC form factor. As someone with a strong interest in digital imaging, I found the touch-screen capabilities intriguring.
"Intriguing." It's a suitable word choice, considering the reason I'm sending this message.
To be blunt, the "Duo Sense" digitizer from N-trig that, theoretically, makes the touch experience possible, is absolutely terrible.
From the start, I've been plagued with issues such as "phantom clicks," or a failure to differentiate between finger and pen touches, to the point that finger input had to be disabled.
Recently, I performed a fresh install of Windows, for a variety of reasons, and afterwards I upgraded to the latest drivers in the vain hope that this would address the issues.
In short, it did not. If anything, this exacerbated the issue.
None of the "fixes" promised in the new drivers were delivered, and just getting them to install was a Herculean - or perhaps Sisyphean would be more apt - task.
The touch features will periodically stop working, Windows will fail to recognize the device, and the firmware for the digitizer will disappear entirely.
In looking online I've found that I'm hardly the only person facing this problem.
As my warranty has expired, I do not expect any sort of technical support for this issue, and I don't want you to view this as a complaint against HP. Touch issues aside, I'm very pleased with the notebook's performance. I've purchased other HP products in the past - indeed, my secondary desktop is a Slimline Pavilion - and will likely do so again.
I simply wanted to state my extreme displeasure with N-trig, and to encourage you to seriously reconsider partnering with them in the future.
And, indeed, touch is clearly the way of the future, and I would hate for HP to get left behind due to the shoddy quality of N-trig products.

Thank you for your time,

Jon Maki

How To Suck

Step 1.

Be N-trig.

Step 2.

See Step 1.

…

Okay, I suppose I should clarify things.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, my laptop is a “Tablet PC” device.  Specifically, the HP TouchSmart Tx2 Notebook, a small laptop with a rotating screen that can transform from the standard “clamshell” design into a slate form factor.  Said screen is “touch-enabled,” meaning that I can take advantage of the “touch” features built into Windows 7 and directly interact with the operating system and applications by pressing on the screen.

The device that makes this – theoretically – possible is a “Duo Sense” digitizer, a thin, clear sheet laid over the display that’s able – again, theoretically – to interpret presses and gestures made either with the included stylus or with your fingers.

I say “theoretically” because the device has never worked as advertised, or rather, it’s never worked well.  In the past I had issues with the digitizer falsely detecting touches and responding accordingly.  I’ve seen the “phantom clicks” in action, and they’re actually kind of eerie, with the screen displaying the little “ripple” effect that’s designed to give you visual feedback of your touches.  The ripples jump all around the screen at random, opening whatever folder or application they happen to click on.

This is, of course, bad news, as the random clicking could eventually start doing things like uninstalling programs and features, or deleting essential files.

The only “fix” for this was to turn off the option of using your finger as an input device.  This would still allow for touch input via the stylus, but the whole point of “Duo Sense” is that you can use both.  Hence the “duo” part of it. The “sense” part is that, when finger input is enabled, it can sense whether you’re touching with your finger or with the stylus.  This comes in handy (that wasn’t a deliberate pun) when you’re using the stylus and your hand brushes against the screen.  It knows you’re using the stylus, and disables the finger input while the stylus is touching the screen, preventing you from doing something unintended.

Again, theoretically.

As detailed in other posts, I recently reinstalled Windows on the laptop and when through considerable troubles attempting to install the latest driver software and firmware for the Duo Sense.

Eventually I did get the drivers – the ones posted on HP’s site – installed, and it appeared to be stable, with no “phantom click” issues.

But then the “phantom clicks” started up again.  According to N-trig, this issue was addressed in the latest driver release. 

Sure it was.

Beyond that, after a random period of use – it could be minutes, it could be hours – the screen would stop responding to finger touches, though the stylus still worked, for a while, though eventually that, too, would stop working.

At times when I went into the N-trig control panel, I would see that it listed the firmware version as all zeroes. 

This was another issue that N-trig said was addressed in the latest driver release.

For a little while, I could temporarily fix this by disabling and then re-enabling finger input.  Then that stopped working, and at times the firmware version would be entirely blank, and neither finger not stylus input would register.  Sometimes a restart would fix it – temporarily – as would a full power cycle, or putting the laptop into sleep mode and then waking it up.

Now?  Not so much.

When I run into issues, I can’t even try reinstalling the driver – which is actually bundled with the firmware, by the way – because when it stops working, it becomes unrecognizable to Windows, which lists the digitizer as “Unknown Device,” and because Windows doesn’t see the N-trig hardware installed, the N-trig diver/firmware software doesn’t see it either, and refuses to run.

So, yeah.

Looking online, I’m clearly not the only one having these kinds of problems.

I’ve sent a blunt and unfriendly message to N-trig, which I’m sure will be ignored.  I’ll also be sending a similar message to HP.  I don’t expect any sort of response from N-trig, because, well, they’re terrible, nor do I expect any sort of assistance or support from HP, given that my warranty has expired.

But my complaint to HP is not about HP itself – beyond the miserable touch screen experience, the laptop is a solid machine and I have no real issues with it –I simply want to let them know that in the future they may want to consider working with another company besides N-trig.

And I’m posting this for the same purpose as my posts from three years ago complaining about DirecPath, the terrible, terrible, absolutely shitty company that was my cable provider at the time:  I need to complain, and I also want to give others who have had a similar experience an area where they can complain as well. 

So if you’ve had issues like mine – or, god forbid, even worse – with N-trig, let the world know in the Comments.  I can’t promise you that it will change anything, or even make you feel better, but at least it’ll be out there.

I Don’t Understand Anything

As I mentioned, I reinstalled Windows on my laptop last weekend. It went okay, for the most part, though it naturally took a while to reinstall all of the programs I wanted back on it – plus some new ones – and to get back all of my customizations (even after doing the Windows Easy Transfer thing, which lets you transfer over your OS and application preferences).

One area where I had some trouble, though, was in reinstalling some of the applications from HP. My laptop is a Tablet PC, with a dual-mode touch-screen that lets you use either a stylus or your fingers, and HP pre-loaded it with some applications designed to take advantage of the touch capabilities.

I didn’t use them often, but I figured I should have them anyway. However, with the exception of the Wireless Assistant and the DVD software, I couldn’t get anything to install. It would act like it was installing, but after finishing, the programs weren’t actually there. Basically, the installer would create a folder with nothing but icons in it. And I mean that literally – actual icons, as in .ico files, the little pieces of artwork that the actual icons themselves consist of. No executables, no .dll files. Just icons.

As I said, I don’t use those apps often, but I wanted them installed, especially since one of them is necessary for accessing the webcam. Which, again, I don’t use often, but…I have it, therefore I want it to work. I’ve since learned that other programs – Windows Live Movie Maker, OneNote, Skype – are able to access the webcam and use it, but I don’t have the handy little program that would let me quickly take pictures and videos and apply different effects to them.

Oh well.

One problem I had before the reinstall, which I’d hoped would go away, involved the touch screen. If I left “touch” – as in, using your finger – turned on, it would engage in “ghost clicks.” Just randomly clicking on the desktop as if it were being touched. This could be a problem, as it frequently would launch things like the control panel, and a series of ghost clicks could start uninstalling important programs and OS components. In the past, I dealt with that by simply turning off touch, and simply using the stylus as my input device.

But, as with my webcam, if I have it, I want it to work. So, having reinstalled Windows and installed a new driver, I’d hoped the problem had gone away. Alas, it hadn’t. I decided to try downloading the driver directly from the touch-screen manufacturer. While there, I noticed that they’d apparently added all sorts of multi-touch enhancements, letting you do all kinds of interesting things by pressing one, two, three, or four fingers on the screen at a time.

Neat.

So I downloaded their driver, and, per the instructions, uninstalled the HP driver. This necessitated a reboot. Once that was done, I launched the setup for the N-Trig driver…which promptly failed, saying it couldn’t detect any N-Trig hardware.

Annoyed, I checked Device Manager, and, sure enough, there was an exclamation point on something called “Unknown Device.”

Several reboots, a System Restore, another System Restore, and a lot of Googling later, I completely powered down the computer, took out the battery, let it sit for a while, then started back up.

This time Device Manager showed “DuoSense HID” under the “Digitizers” category. Yay! So I launched the driver setup, which actually started to install without saying it couldn’t detect the hardware, which looked promising. So I wandered off and let it do its thing, only to come back some time later to find that the installation had failed.

Multiple power cycles later I tried again, and this time it came up and complained that the old software was still installed and that if I clicked “Yes” it would remove the old software and shut down the computer, and that it would resume setup once I turned the computer back on.

Daring to hope once more, I proceeded.

Success!

Except…

I don’t have all of that multi-touch coolness that I’m supposed to have. Putting multiple fingers on the screen – except when doing the standard “pinching” to zoom out/in thing – doesn’t do jack.

I found another driver on HP’s site that says that it adds the multi-touch capability, but I’m wary of trying this again. I even downloaded and installed some “wintab” API that’s supposed to make the “N-act Hands-On Gestures Vocabulary” work, but no dice.

So I don’t understand. Is there something I’m missing? Presumably the drivers I (finally) installed were what was given to HP, who customized them in some fashion, but I’m pretty sure those were the drivers I had installed back when this whole mess started.

I don’t understand anything.

In any case, despite wanting to be able to do cool stuff like what you see below, I’m going to leave well enough alone for now. After all, it was bad enough when I thought that maybe I’d somehow fried the actual hardware. Most of my Googling on the subject had talked about the only resolution being to return it to HP and have them put on an entirely new screen. Which is fine, if, unlike me, your warranty didn’t expire a month and a half ago…

Edit: Ahhh...okay, maybe I understand something. Looked at the N-Trig page again and found something that says that a trial download of N-act Hands-On Gestures Vocabulary will be available in the “summer months of 2010.”