Since posting this, I've tried every option I can think of:

-I've toggled the pen flicks on and off, no difference.
-I've made every possible adjustment (without losing track of the original settings) of the Pen tool in the control panel, no difference.
-I've gone into the Photoshop Brush editing section titled "Shape Dynamics", where one can directly turn on or off the "Pen Pressure" feature, and I've turned it "on" but get a little yellow triangle next to it when I turn it on, telling me that "Pen Pressure" is not currently available.
-I've made every possible adjustment (again without losing track of the original settings) in the "Tablet PC Input Panel" options
-I've downloaded the latest drivers for my tablet and for Wacom support for "tablet PCs" from their websites
-I even called the HP customer technical support line, got a guy who said they basically aren't responsible for any of the associated software and couldn't give any help on this regard, which sounded like a huge feed of BS, but whatever, didn't expect much help there anyways.

I'm desperate to get this to work... please help :'(

Carrigon said: Go to Adobe's site and see if there is anything about it over there. I use Corel, too, but I haven't had a chance yet to really use the latest version with this pc.

Could you link me to this Adobe site?

I've tried it with Corel Painter Essentials 4, and can't find anything to fix it. I tried Corel's Brush Tracking feature (Edit -> Brush Tracking) which seems like the correct (and only) place to test & adjust pen pressure in Corel, and it is completely unable to detect any change in pen pressure in that subfunction. 

Thanks for the information, Nick; very revealing.

I guess this explains the problem in its entirety. The only step towards solving our dilemma now, it seems, will be for N-Trig technology to either produce a driver to make it compatible with some digital drawing software, or produce their own software for digital drawing that includes pressure sensitivity. I sent them a lengthy comment on their website (www.n-trig.com), outlining how huge this issue is to every graphic artist who purchases this great-deal Notebook PC and/or uses N-Trig technology, so hopefully they'll get enough incentive to do something about it. I also sent them an email to hands-on@n-trig.com, which seems to be their customer support email.

That being said, comments and emails submitted to them by others as well can only help our cause. Here's the direct link to their page where you can submit such a comment, scroll down to the bottom:
http://www.n-trig.com/Content.aspx?Page=Bulletin_Board

And again, here's their email:
hands-on@n-trig.com

Here's the specific email I sent them myself:

Header: "Important issue with N-Trig technology and digital art software, please take the time to read..."

Body: "I recently purchased the HP TouchSmart tx2-1020us Notebook PC. Through using it, I have discovered a distinct lack of any kind of pressure sensitivity feature in all artistic software applications I have tried running (Corel Painter Essentials 4, Adobe Photoshop 7.0, Adobe Photoshop CS2, Adobe Illustraitor, openCanvas 4.5). It has come to my attention that these applications support a more Wacom-enabled interface for pen pressure technology, which just so happens to have 1024 layers of pressure rather than N-Trig's 256 layers of pressure.

256 layers of pressure is certainly still workable, however, if N-Trig-associated pen pressure were an available feature in a given graphic drawing application. I am an artist myself, and the lack of pen pressure in these applications is a huge issue, and is not something I can simply overlook if I plan to use the notebook for any kind of graphic art.

It is my hope that N-Trig will release a driver update to fix this issue, or provide a digital drawing application that can use the N-Trig technology, including pen pressure sensitivity.

This is an issue of huge importance to likely every graphic artist that purchases this notebook PC or any N-Trig technology that incorporates a stylus. I emphatically stress that this issue be solved in some way.

Thanks for taking your time to read my comment, I hope something good can come of this.

Sincerely,
-Tom Haid"

Hopefully we can really get this ball rolling and fix our problem before it becomes a huge issue for every graphic artist that purchases this Notebook PC (which, by the way, seems to be appearing in several stores lately at great deals).

Good luck to you as well. I will also continue to report my findings here. I plan to call HP technical support today to inform them of the entirety of the situation, assuming they don't know (well, so far their tech representatives I've already spoken with have no clue...) and hopefully by informing enough separate parties with relation to the same issue, things well get done right sooner than later.

I find it great news though that you've found a program that works with the TouchSmart's N-Trig pressure sensitivity. I downloaded a trial version of Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, and it's not that bad. If you want to add text, you can always save it then reopen it in Photoshop, assuming you won't need pressure sensitivity for the text function, edit it with text, then save it again. It's a bit round-about, but it's not that hard to have both Sketchbook Pro and Photoshop open at the same time, saving and swapping a file back and forth between them I suppose; well, at least it's better than nothing at all.

I received an email response from the hands-on N-Trig support:

"Dear Tom,

Thank you for your mail.

DuoSense does support full pressure-sensitivity. For example, if you open Microsoft Journal, and select Tools => Options => Pen Settings, there is a Pressure Sensitivity checkbox which can be selected, and doing so enables full pressure sensitivity in all supported applications.

Other examples of applications that support pressure sensitivity with DuoSense, are the Windows Office applications, the ArtRage graphical application to name but two.

Regarding your issue concerning specific software that does not support DuoSense pressure sensitivity, such as Photoshop or Corel Painter Essentials 4, we recommend that you consult with the Customer Support department of that software's manufacturer.

Thank you for visiting our website and taking the trouble to contact us.

Kind regards,

Debbie Gold Hadar

Business Development

N-trig Ltd."

I haven't heard about ArtRage before, but it looks somewhat interesting on their website(s). I'll look more into it when I get a chance.