Enabling Multi-Touch in Windows 7 Beta
posted by crazlunaticMicrosoft announced on their Windows 7 Team Blog yesterday that some users can finally use Windows 7’s new multi-touch capabilities on their computers. Windows 7 will eventually allow multi-touch to function on all devices that can support such features, but limited drivers only allow some systems to use the new features. You’d need one of the following computers to use multi-touch
- HP TouchSmart All-in-One PCs (IQ500 series & IQ800 series)
- HP TouchSmart tx2 Tablet PC
- Dell Latitude XT Tablet PC
Before you can get multi-touch up and running, you’ll need to get the appropriate drivers first:
- For HP TouchSmart All-in-One PCs: The driver is available from Windows Update. After you have installed the Window 7 Beta, open Windows Update from the Start menu. You might have to click the “Check for Updates” link on your left so it will find the driver, it is Optional right now so you’ll have to select it before it will install.
- For the Dell Latitude XT and HP TouchSmart tx2 Tablet PCs: the drivers are available now on N-Trig’s website. N-Trig is the company that makes the digitizer in these PCs (you should read the release notes, there are some limitations, like no pen support you should be aware of and how to switch between Windows Vista and Windows 7). Please also note these are beta drivers and are not supported by Dell or HP.
When you’ve got everything done, fire up paint to see if multi-touch is working properly. Paint and IE8 have been optimized to better suit users using multi-touch with panning and flicking features. Jumplists can also be easily accessed by dragging your finger up from the taskbar icon. Don’t forget that icons can be enlarged if you right click on your desktop, choose personalize, and click on display in the bottom left corner.
Related posts:
- Windows 7 touch and multi-touch gestures demonstrated on video There’s been a lot of talk about the touch features...
- Windows 7 Multi-Touch Demo disappoints This is probably the first demonstration of Windows 7...
- First ever Windows 7 Multi-touch App for Media Transfer PQ-DVD has designed the first Multi-Touch app we’ve seen...
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