I have serious issues when it comes to expressing with the keyboard as several other bloggers do. Though I am a seasoned programmer, I tend to play and fiddle with the keys while thinking causing distraction and anxiety. Thus I looked for alternatives and decided to purchase a tablet device to replace my keyboard and mouse.
I tend to favor devices (or rather get carried away by those) which flaunt higher specs. and features. After all some bucks on the higher side, I won’t have to make the same investment in case I bought the cheaper one only to find I need better.
Bamboo or Intuos
Wacom is an established brand in the world of tablet devices. It has two lines of tablet devices – the Bamboo and the Intuos. There are substantial differences between the two line-ups. The differences are basically in the specs. and the number of Expresskeys available. Bamboo does the handwriting and is good for limited drawing. The Intuos 3 in addition to handwriting is designed to work with over 73 design applications. It has higher levels of tip sensitivity for better simulating actual drawing. Bamboo is the little brother of Intuos and is aimed for the beginners for basic needs. Intuos meanwhile is targeted for the pros. However at the end of the day usability is what matters.
Standard or Widescreen
Well there’s a price difference to consider and widescreen size is definitely the way to go. But thinking of it the other way; cut of a few inches off the top of the standard size and feel free to call it widescreen and pay extra for it. Or you can buy the standard aspect ratio and you’ll have the option in the software settings to map the hardware to widescreen proportion.
Size
The 6×11 that I bought has approximately a usable area equivalent to that of an A4 sheet. It also has the footprint of a 19″ notebook which makes it a little difficult to accommodate on a small workstation space; it kills the portability. After having bought it, I think I could have done with a smaller size. Here are the reasons. First the tablet input panel in Vista can only be as large. You can resize it but you also have to keep the main application area visible, Word or Notepad for example. Secondly, the area that it occupies is far large than a normal writing pad which is distracting in the initial days. Finally you basically end up wasting most of the extra size that you paid for.
Installation
You are ready to go as soon as you have plugged in the tablet and installed the driver. The first time you hold the pen and try to write you’d scream out in horror to see how it comes out on the tablet. Either you’ve been using the keyboard too much and are out of touch of writing or there’s something grossly wrong with the device. But if there’s anything wrong with the technical side, it fortunately is not your new hardware. It is the software, Vista in this case. Another excuse to say “Vista sucks.” But that’s the best available.
Features
It’s got a ton of features but they are as good as the pen you have. The device comes with a standard grip pen and three different kinds of nibs - 5 pieces of the standard nib, one felt nib to give a pencil-on-paper feel and one stroke nib for a brush like feel for drawing. Depending on the region where you purchase it from you may also get the Intuos3 mouse - evidently Wacom did realise that you couldn’t completely do away with the mouse. The standard nib gives you a fountain pen feel which I love but have been out of touch since I left school. You can change the sensitivity of the tip if you put a lot of pressure while writing. You can force the aspect ratio if you are using one having a standard aspect ration on a widescreen. You can customize the expresskeys - they are present on both sides so I’ve changed the ones on the right side to escape, tab, alt and pan/zoom. You can have application specific settings, you can change the way the duo switch on the pen works and you can have the pen behave like mouse (in which case it uses relative positioning and acceleration too comes into play thereby distorting your handwriting). You can purchase additional pens and nibs for serious artwork. You can rotate the tablet as you require etc. There’s quite a lot more than you’ll use. I just wish I had a feature in Vista to get rid of the tablet input panel dictionary (explained later).
Handwriting
This is probably the saddest and the worst part. In this day of cutting edge technology is it very disappointing to see how badly technical concepts are implemented. Vista is a case in point. Vista boasts of handwriting recognition. But sadly it only does the guessing jobusing the inbuilt dictionary. It’s a mockery of artificial intelligence. Any proper nouns or programming keywords go for a toss. Blog becomes 11 “flog” and Darren Rowse becomes “barren rose”. It comes as a relief that Vista over the time records your handwriting strokes and creates a database to identify what you may be trying to write. Thus you have to train Vista to tame it.
Now there’s one thing which I really crave I could do. If there was a way I could get rid of the built-in dictionary and put an end to this guessing game. I would then be able to force Vista to ignore its knowledge of English and learn it from scratch - the way I write. I could write spelling the words from right to left to make them meaningless and force Vista to learn all the strokes that I make to the letter. Now is it not the way things should really be teamed for the finesse?
Drawing
Not a smooth ride here too. But this is the part I love the most. Because there’s no guessing game, you get what you draw. However it takes some time getting used to it. I have seen issues when using the rectangle marquee tool to make a selection in Photoshop. When I lift the tip to complete the selection, the selection is always altered by a few pixels. That is because the tip moves as I try to lift. It is very much like clicking photos –as you press the shutter release, the camera shakes. Again, as I said it is only a matter of time getting used to it.
Conclusion
Now that you have bought this device for about 400$ how do you get it to pay you back? The shortcomings in the handwriting software are obvious. It will take another generation of Windows OS to make the tablet usable for daily computer use. But I’ve been messing with device heavily for the last one month since I bought it and I’ve finally had considerable success taming it. So stay tuned for my next article revealing the rarest of tablet tips. For those who don’t have a tablet and are considering buying one; my two cents - buy an effective typing tutor software and have an easier and fun time taming the keyboard.
Pictures
Click to view full size. I used my Nikon D80 to shoot through.
The package
The Software
The Pen
Nibs and the nib removal tool
Expresskeys (present on both sides)
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