Digitally Yours

lacey

I love my Wacom Tablet and I use it all the time at work. It took some ergonomic adjustments, though, so I wouldn’t strain my shoulder (my tablet is really big, plus it slides back sometimes, and you have to remember to keep it in a place where it would naturally be if you were writing). It’s hard for some people to get used to, but once your learning curve is past, it’s hard to go back, simply because it’s so much more sensitive than a mouse (and there’s none of the hand crampiness). Also, most tablets have a mouse as well, so guests don’t get all confused. :)

Phineas

Faxing in 2008 makes about as much sense as carrier pigeon or semaphore. And is about as convenient.

Justin

I’ve been so close to doing exactly this a number of times. A few questions about the switch:

- How is the tablet for non-design tasks like browsing or chatting? It’s always seemed like you either had to choose between switching back and forth between the mouse and stylus, or stick to the stylus and do without things like mousewheel. How have you managed that so far?

- Is the small-factor keyboard a necessity for the setup? I do a lot of composing in Sibelius that relies heavily on the numpad, so I would be hesitant to downgrade to a smaller keyboard (as nice as it is). It could be done by remapping numpad keys in Sibelius, but that’s a pretty big change.

Davin

I’ve tried tablets briefly on a few occasions and also never really clicked with one as a primary “mousing” device. While I know it takes some practice, I have always found that having to pick something up to mouse is too purposeful and combined typing and mousing actions get sort of messy.

Unlike some, I really love laptop trackpads. My dream is a quadruple-sized trackpad that would replace my mouse and allow for easy finger gestures for mousing. It could be small enough to even sit in front of a keyboard. I’ve seen some small trackpad input devices but nothing that’s at a size that really makes sense. I keep hoping that Apple will read my mind and come out with one so I can throw-out my mouse altogether.

Glenn

I bought the regular Bamboo a little over a month ago. I’ve been enjoying it a lot. Didn’t have much interest in them until I began working for trailer editing company. All of the editors use them along with our print department. I didn’t want to go all out with an Intuos just incase I didn’t like it. So far the Bamboo has been great. I rarely go back to the mouse. Even for common tasks such as web browsing and email.

Virginia

What’s the resolution like? I’ve got an old Wacom tablet (I forget the model, but it’s small and was cheap), and I found the resolution too low for it to be really useful: lines drawn with it in Photoshop were blocky and awkward. Tellya what I’d love, though, is a Cintiq, which can be used as a secondary screen (for palettes and whatnot) when you’re not drawing on it. Very. Expensive.

Naz

Lacey – Agreed all round.

Phineas – I agree there as well. Why fax? I thought PDF’s were the “wave of the future.”

Justin –

1) It’s completely fine. I like the idea of it in general — it’s like a pen. It’s like actual pointing with something. I like that I have a point to it. I do not use the mouse. The mice that accompany Wacom’s are pretty much crap.

2) I don’t think so. I just didn’t find it that comfortable for me but really, it was partly also due to the fact that I hate wires and so that too was a factor. If you don’t need a large tablet, then you’ll be fine with your current keyboard. If you have one of those pull-out keyboard desks, then this whole thing is moot.

Davin – I think the only laptop trackpad I’ve thought really hit the nail has to be in the new Apple laptops — bringing the touch gestures to it makes a lot of sense to me. I’m actually fond of the IBM Thinkpad “nipple”. Again, more pointing I suppose.

Virginia – the resolution is pretty nice. I have it mapped to the mouse so it uses the available area as the full desktop. If I were drawing, I’d probably switch it for those purposes. But for pixel work, the mouse mode works best. The sensitivity is pretty good.

I also have to agree, I’d LOVE a Cintiq. The idea of using the screen itself as one big canvas brings a tear to my eye. One day.

gavin

i picked up a Bamboo Fun a couple months ago to use for retouching, hadn’t thought to use it for signatures. i find myself switching out the tablet when i’m not going to be using it, mainly for space, and i’m not sure i could live without the Mighty Mouse’s omnidirectional scrollyball – plus the Wacom mouse is crap as has been noted.

Andrew

The Wacom mouse is crap? The one I have with my Graphire is just fine for me — I’m not doing much design with it, but it works for browsing.

Naz

My biggest contention with the mouse is not so much that it’s crap but moreso that the available coverage isn’t useful for design at least. Like the stylus, you’re relegated to a defined and set area — but unlike the sylus, you don’t have a tip to pinpont whereas with the mouse you’re overlapping the edges of the area to get to the same edges onscreen.

gavin

Maybe it’s just the one that comes with Bamboo… also maybe I should have sprung for the larger tablet, but the usable ‘mouse’ area would still be smaller than a standard mousepad. i prefer to stick with Apple’s mouse and use the tablet strictly for stylin’ with the stylus.

lacey

I rarely ever use the mouse that came with the tablet just because it’s just as fast now to stick the pen in its holster when I need to switch back to keyboard as it was to switch over to a regular mouse. Also, I have a Intuos 3 and it has buttons that you can customize (I see the bamboo also has buttons but I’m not sure what you can set them to do). There’s one long button that I have set as a touchpad scroller so that I don’t have to use the pen to drag a scrollbar down or use the keyboard, all I have to do is touch it and drag my finger down. It’s pretty nice. I actually find the mouse kind of clunky now, but it’s certainly not bad.

Patrice

Naz, thanks for the comment on my site man. How do you know Bernard and Puck?