Dell Studio 17 Multi-touch Windows 8 compatibility

Hello all, my first post here. Couldn't find a definitive answer to this question by Googling, hopefully some people will know.

I have a Dell Studio 1747 with Multi-touch that is still chugging along since I bought it in May 2010. It's the 820QM version with 8GB RAM, so it's still pretty damn good (besides the 4650 graphics card, but oh well). I am not planning on changing any time soon, so I was wondering how OS-update friendly it is. Mainly, if its multi-touch capability will be Windows 8 compatible. I haven't found anything to confirm one way or the other. There's this thread:

Touch Screen is not working but mouse works on Dell Studio 17 multi touch

But it's from a year ago and concerns an early development version of Windows 8. Perhaps the newer RCs and final version of Windows 8 will be compatible. Has anyone tried it out?

I am personally not optimistic. Something tells me the multi-touch hardware and drivers are an earlier generation and wouldn't work. And even if it was possible, Dell probably doesn't care enough anymore to do the necessary updates. But who knows, hopefully someone can shed some light on this.

Thanks in advance.

 

It should work but corners and edges my not work or will be difficult so you will not be able to use the start menu from left corner.

 

I also own the Studio 1747, The MultiTouch currently does not work on Studio 1747 Windows 8. If you go to the Ntrig site, they have windows 8 legacy drivers, but it only enables single touch (only one touch point works at a time) the Multi-Touch features do not work...Yet?... Hopefully.
The only real issue I had when updating to Windows 8 is the WIFI card wasn't compatible, and Dell no longer supports driver updates for our computer. I did find a way to fix it, message me if you end up upgrading and I'll walk you through it. Be prepared to have to use a wired connection until the driver is fixed, it would have taken an hour to download the file wirelessly because the WIFI card was only going at abouy 0.3Mbps, only took 1 minute wired. But now all is good.
FYI if you google search windows 8 promo code and fill out the form on the windows site and tell it you got Windows 7 within the last year, it'll only cost you $15 to upgrade. It's what I did.

 

This message is for ruthlessrealm

I'm having the same WIFI problems as you described in this post.

If you could point me to the URL where you found the wifi driver for win 8 that would be great.

Thanks

 

Download this driver from Dell (Use a wired connection wireless took over an hour, I wired it and it took 1 minute.) Save it to desktop, DO NOT run it!!!

downloads.dell.com/FOLDER00522492M/1/Network_Driver_WD35F_WN_5.100.235.12_A37.EXE

Double click the file you downloaded, click extract files only. It will create a folder on the C: drive at C:\Dell\Drivers\NMGJH.

Next go to search feature on Windows 8 and type computer management, open up computer management, then open device manager. Find your wireless adapter under network adapters in Device Management, right click, choose update driver.

Then choose the option browse my computer for driver software, then choose the option "let me pick from a list...." then click have disk, the file you are looking for is located at C:\Dell\Drivers\NMGJH\R258276\DRIVER_US and is named bcmwl6.inf choose that file and install it. All will be good!!!!

 

Did that work for you???

 

It worked fine - thank you.

BTW - do you know if there is bluetooth w8 driver available for the studio 1747

 

Bluetooth driver is the same as for studio 1558, software 12.0.0.1600 from asus and driver 12.0.0.10 from windows update.

 

I have not found one that works yet.

 

Hey, thanks! Didn't see your reply until now. I have updated to Win 8 (with the discount you mentioned, a bargain) and yeah, multi-touch doesn't work. I'll try the N-trig drivers, I guess single touch is better than nothing.

Thankfully I didn't have trouble with my WiFi after upgrading, it works fine and download speeds go up to over 1 MBs at times. I didn't even know there were known issues with it until you mentioned it. I guess I got lucky there. Thanks!