Baxil (baxil) wrote,
Baxil
baxil
  • Location: ~/Brainstorm
  • Mood: amazed
  • Music: Brainpool, "Who's That Man?"

Product recommendation

Back in the ancient, crazy days of 2002, I bought a graphics tablet for a very reasonable price. It plugged into those newfangled USB port things, and only one of my computers had a USB card installed, but (even on a Mac) I ran it with almost no trouble. The included software worked well, the drivers caused no issues, the plugins for my graphics programs integrated excellently and took full advantage of the tablet's pressure sensitivity, and the hardware was sturdy. I doubt I used it enough to justify the purchase price, but it was an awesome toy and I'm glad I bought it.

Today I dragged the tablet down out of the attic. It has survived two moves and seven years of sloppy handling. It has outlived two computers and seven OS upgrades. I surfed to the manufacturer website, discovered the tablet is still actively supported, downloaded current drivers for OSX, rebooted, and it's performing like it came home from the store yesterday. There's even a handwriting recognition feature that I haven't yet played with.

Ironically, my computer is too old to use my 2002 tablet at full efficiency. My only installation issue is that The GIMP for Mac OS X doesn't have pressure sensitivity support, because the underlying X11 environment for OS 10.4.11 won't recognize the device as a tablet (which they fixed in OS 10.5). With a commercial drawing program, I'd be set.

So, I would like to wholeheartedly endorse Wacom for their breathtaking awesomeness. This sort of computer peripheral product longevity is unheard of, and if you have any use for a drawing tablet whatsoever, they deserve your business.
Tags: multimedia, reviews, technology
Subscribe

  • If this is to be goodbye

    I consider the following unlikely, 12/21/12 or not. However, in virtually any scenario in which: A) the world ends, and B) my words outlast me, to…

  • Baxil sighting opportunity

    Just as a heads-up, I will be attending RainFurrest this coming weekend! It's rare for me to go to cons outside of northern California owing to…

  • way to go, spammers

    Due to a relentless beating of commentspam over the last several weeks (now up to about 10 per day), I've finally disabled anonymous commenting on my…

  • Post a new comment

    Error

    Anonymous comments are disabled in this journal

    switch
    default userpic

    Your reply will be screened

    Your IP address will be recorded 

    Help
  • 9 comments