OK, my impressions after one evening:
First, a disclaimer - I just setup the tablet for pen use, I didn't bother unpacking the included mouse as it felt shithouse so I kept my current optical mouse. I also didn't bother to load any of the included software as I felt they were well out of date - eg. there's mention of Win9x/NT compatibility on them, and adobe reader version 4 was included!
I've never used a tablet before, so I'm still getting used to certain aspects of it - and don't know how this compares to the benchmark (Wacom).
Upon plugging it in, WinXP detects it as such and such... useable to move the cursor about - but upon installing the included driver, its functionality is much improved. Yes, there are 512 levels of pressure sensitivity (supposedly just like the latest Wacoms), totally user adjustable within the driver. There's a test thingy that shows you the greater pressure you exert with the pen, the bigger the virtual ink blot you make onscreen. The driver also offer programmable buttons, and selectable scribbling area, among many other options.
This tablet is big!!! I think a little too big so for my needs... I had to shift alot of junk off my desk to accomodate it. It's about the size of A3 sheet of paper.
The mapping of tablet co-ordinate to onscreen - well, previously my mouse is setup to shift the cursor fully from left to right/top to bottom of the screen with less than 1 inch movement. That's the way I like it, and what I've been used to over the years.
This tablet has like a physical map of the screen - the co-ordinate point on the tablet corresponds to that point on the monitor. The tablet is bigger than my monitor, hence moving the pen 3 inches across corresponds to maybe a 2 inch cursor movement onscreen. I guess I'll have to reduce the scribble area to a small portion of the whole to reduce the needed movement. This means that by default, one can draw/move with great precision. This can be great for photoshop use, where one can very finely select/draw portions of the image or trace an outline for instance.
For as long as I can remember, I could type faster than I could write, and moving a mouse to select areas in photoshop came more natural to me than using a pen... however, YOUR mileage will vary. I would say most people would prefer tablets to mice for image manipulation, drawing or writing applications, as a pen seems a more natural instrument to use... however, as I have discovered, I'm not like most people.
Attempting to use the pen for more mundane tasks like surfing the net or browsing windows explorer presents a few challenges. Firstly, the tip of the pen defaults to a left click. It's very hard to glide the pen over the tablet surface in moving the cursor and not accidently apply too much pressure that it registers as a left click. I guess that's why they included the cordless mouse... and yes, there's alkaline
AAA batteries included in the package for both pen and mouse.
Edit: I have no idea what the appletalk forum folks are on about - it works fine in CS2 on my machine, with the drivers included on the CD.
Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2005 12:37 pm
Hello Sony basher 