Microsoft leads $24M investment in N-Trig

The big news today is that Microsoft is leading a $24M investment in multi-touch digitizer maker N-Trig. Here’s the announcement from N-Trig. The Wall Street Journal has a write up here. It’s at the top of TechMeme too.

For the most part it looks like people are looking at this quite favorably and as a sign of Microsoft’s commitment to touch in Windows 7. It is. There’s no doubt that Microsoft needs to have hardware support for multi-touch and as of today N-Trig is a key player in this market and Microsoft needs to do all it can to help N-Trig and other digitizer companies.

I do, though, have a much more critical and different take on this whole thing–especially in light of the just ended CES show.

Here’s the deal. The N-Trig digitizer is the first true multi-touch digitizer on the market. It’s great because it supports capacitive touch as well as pen input. That’s wonderful for a Tablet PC. The Dell Tablet PC, for instance, uses it. However, there are some very well known problems with the N-Trig digitizer and let’s not forget the unbelievably high price that Dell is charging for it. Neither has been a good beginning for this technology. And there’s more. As of at least the M3 build of Windows 7 (I’m just getting back from CES so I haven’t had a chance to see if the experience is any better in the new beta build.) the alpha/beta N-Trig multi-touch driver for Windows 7 on the Dell is so bad it’s practically useless. Yes, useless. It’s no wonder that at almost every public Windows 7 multi-touch presentation now you see HP’s TouchSmart display being used and not the Dell.

Now I’m not saying that the N-Trig digitizer is junk. It’s not. What I am questioning is the commitment that N-Trig and even Microsoft have to making things work right. If it’s going to take $24M for N-Trig to write a good driver and get things right, then so be it. But come on. These Dell Tablet PC problems have been well known for what a year now and there’s no Dell/N-Trig fix and there’s currently no good N-Trig support for Windows 7. What is Microsoft rewarding here? Yeah, I’m being tough, but come on this is a big deal. Are we going to see a dribble of touch or a strong, first rate commitment to it?

The timing of this is interesting too. I think after the experiences with the N-Trig, there are many of us that are awaiting the Wacom capacitive digitizer. At CES Toshiba was showing a prototype M750 Tablet with the forthcoming device. My fingers are crossed that we’ll see a solid showing from Wacom here at a reasonable price.

And there’s the InPlay WriteSense capacitive technology too and its promises of providing a lower cost experience.

I have no hands on experience with either, but if I were Microsoft I’d be looking closely at these and other alternatives.

Last point: It looks like we need to do some educating here. I find it interesting that the Wall Street Journal in this article about N-Trig’s multi-touch product shows the TouchSmart displays. Uhm. The TouchSmart displays don’t use the N-Trig digitizer. They use NextWindows’ optical sensor, which provides a mere two-point touch.