More about the HID Driver support in Q1

Today I read a very pessimist comment at JKonTheRun about the HID Driver support and here what I think. Probably Kevin is right, probably Samsung won't release officially anything for old Q1s for Vista. They don't have to do so and that will increase a lot the amount of Tech Support calls. So up to this point Kevin is right. What I don't think is right is to keep pointing users to use the old XP drivers and to stay using the old BIOS and not to install the latest one version 20MA. Why I say that this is wrong? Well, because buy staying with the old XP drivers running under Vista you are ending without SRS Sound Support, with Microphones not working properly, with a MagicKeyboard program that does not work properly, a Power Manager that it's not working and wasting your battery a lot faster and on top of all that, you don't have HID Driver support and you will never have if you stay using the old BIOS.

If you install the new Q1p Vista Drivers, you are going to see, full SRS Sound support, your Microphones will work a lot better, you will get a new power management software that really works, you will get finally your hot keys working properly. On top of that you will get a new MenuUI easier to use with a new option that allows you to rotate the screen in two directions. The only thing that you don't get is HID Support. A big difference if you ask me. If staying with the old drivers and BIOS is 95% then with the new drivers seems to me 98%.

But that's not all. Yesterday I said that I was looking into more info about the HID Drivers. Today I can say one thing. Samsung wont release any HID Drivers because it's Microsoft USB HID Drivers what they are using. We are making a big mistake trying to install the TouchKit from egalax to get our touch screen functional. That's why the Touchkit is not included in the Q1p Vista pre-installed Drivers.

But before I get deeper into this, lets explain what I know at this moment:

1- The Q1p with Vista use the 20MA BIOS.

2- The Q1p with Vista does not use the TouchKit PAD, instead of using that, they let Microsoft install a generic USB Human Interface Device Driver as it can be seen in these two following pictures:

Add to this that according to the experience of people installing Vista in a TK i7210, this device is recognized as a Tablet PC if they do not install the TouchPack from egalax. These two facts are telling me clearly that we don't need the Touchpack kit.

3- There were two files that we could not make it work from the Q1p CD. One of them, relative with Touch Screen calibration.

4- I have try to get the touch screen working in the pass without installing the Touchkit and I could not because I could not calibrate the screen. Wait a minute, did I said that I could not calibrate the screen? Check point No 3. Now we have a tool coming from Samsung that should be used to calibrate the screen. In that folder where the screen calibration tool is located there is another program, I checked what is in that program and I found that it has to write a pre-calibration value in the registry. If you try to run the calibration tool having the Touchkit running, you wont see anything happening. If you run it without the Touchkit installed you will get an error message. But I ran that tool from that folder, when what I should have done is to place that tool in the right location where it should be copied by Samsung Installation tool.

Conclusion

We have everything is needed to get the HID support we just do not know how to get it. In the next few days starting from today, I (and I'm sure that Jay and other guys will do the same) will concentrate my efforts in finding the way to get the HID support into our devices. The major problem that we have at this moment is that there was only one Q1p with Vista preintalled owner (R D, Thanks to you!) who has helped us in all these issues, and he is returning his Q1p to get a P1610.

What we still need?

1- We need a backup of the MS USB HID Driver, that will make easier the installation.
2- We need to find the right location where they should be copied for those two calibration files. My guess is that it's Windows\System32.
3- We need a .reg with the value written in a Q1p registry to keep the pre calibration, or what I think is the pre calibration value.

So, as you can see, I'm very optimist at this point. There is a probability that we are not going to see HID Support, but that probability is very low at this point. So, stay tunned. We are going to get it, with Samsung or without Samsung, it's just a matter of time.