Valhalla Island

Graphics tablets have always been the quintessential graphic designers tool. Like Apple computers once were, they used to be out of reach for me financially. Now Wacom, the tablet maker, have released the Bamboo, an entry level tablet short on many advanced features but also short on price. I first saw it on Next Byte’s store shelves, after quickly checking reviews at Amazon and a few other places, all positive, I bought it right there.

At AU$130 it’s at least three times cheaper than any graphics tablet I’ve looked at in the past. While I’ve always wanted one, I’d never actually used one but I did understand how they worked and knew exactly where it’s advantages would lie.

I picked up the Bamboo over the more expensive, mouse toting and much uglier Bamboo Fun. Same buttons, same drawing area, almost identical specs but the fun is uglier and comes with a mouse. The fun-less Bamboo is really good looking, it’s super thin, it sits even lower on the desk than Apple’s new keyboards.

Most friends that have seen it see its sole purpose as to replace typing with hand writing. I had no intention of ever using it for hand writing or even drawing. I did spend a little time playing with Apple’s Ink but correct recognition was poor and it’s simply much faster and easier to type. Wacom’s website tries to sell the Bamboo on note taking and hand writing but that’s really not the kind of thing you want to be using a graphics tablet for.

It really shines in comfort, speed and ability to draw things like this:

Drawing scribble like that with a mouse and the pen tool is excruciatingly slow and to make it look that natural would be very difficult. With a tablet it can be drawn effortlessly in a second or less.

As a mouse it works beautifully. I unplugged my MX Revolution, plugged in the Bamboo and haven’t once felt like needing or using the mouse. There’s a small learning curve but if you know how to use a pen it’ll only take a day or two until you’re flying. The absolute positioning takes the most getting used to but is also a great advantage, once you get used to what point on the surface points to which point on the screen using a mouse will begin to seem extremely cumbersome.

Using a tablet is to using a mouse what teleporting is to walking.

Above the drawing surface is a scroll/zoom pad two function buttons, back and forward buttons. By default the function buttons are expose and show desktop but can be customised. The wheel can zoom and scroll. I never use any of these buttons or the wheel, once you get used to scrolling with the pen buttons, which is much like using the hand tool, there’s no need for them.

The feel is great, the pen’s tip on the surface has a light scratchy feel which is very similar to the feel of my favourite ink pens on thick paper. It’s not a slippery surface, it feels like natural writing.

The only negative is almost impossible use with dual screens. It’s not stopping me use dual screens at the moment, I’m not for other reasons I’ll talk about in another post. The problem is that a surface that maps directly to the screen is now stretched over a much more width so control horizontally becomes really shaking and imprecise. I’m sure this would be far less of a problem with a tablet with a larger surface area but for a 6 x 4 it’s definitely a problem.