Hard and Soft - Hardware + Software Reviews

I'm taking a vacation until about Wed Oct 12, during which time I may or may not post to this blog.

raj

I can't remember the first sketch tablet I ever used, but I do remember using digitizing tables the size of small tables back when I was doing a lot of work with digital maps and GIS (Geographical Information Systems). I found using a digitizer far more efficient than a computer mouse for a lot of everyday computer use. Sketch tablets are close cousin to digitizers and typically sport a point device that looks like a pen. In more recent years, a cordless mouse is usually part of the package, as the digital pen is not always an efficient, general purpose way to navigate your computer applications. Sketch tablets are a great way to reduce stress on your wrist if you are stuck using the touchpad of a laptop.

I recently picked up a Wacom Graphire 3 4x5 (inches) tablet that includes both a digital pen and mouse. (Believe it or not, I had a very hard time finding a store that carries sketch tablets these days. It might be different in big cities.) The Graphire 3, which doesn't appear on Wacom's web site anymore, cost me $129 + taxes, which isn't too far off the $99 + taxes that I paid for my older Wacom PenPartner 4x5 in around 1999. But the PenPartner doesn't have a mouse, and it needs two serial ports to operate. My laptop (Acer Centrino Travelmate 4002WLMi with two wi-fi cards) only has USB and Firewire ports, hence why I bought the Graphire 3. I use both the mouse and the digital pen, depending on what I'm up to.

So far, I've only had three problems with the Graphire, but they are relatively minor:

(1) I use a "hibernate" mode for my Acer laptop. When I turn it on, all the applications I was running come back alive. For some reason, the laptop takes a while to realize the tablet is connected. Fortunately, I can use my laptop touchpad until the tablet is recognized. (Except that in the few short days I've had this tablet, my wrist already hurts from the wait time of using the laptop touch pad.)
(2) I'm sure this is psychological, but I sometimes get a weird physical response if the cordless mouse of the tablet goes outside the active area. It feels the same as when a mouse cord gets snagged on something. Weird.
(3) One of the free bonus software packages, Adobe Photoshop Elements 2, wouldn't install because the (original) CD-ROM is missing some language files. (Hey, I live in an English-speaking country and this is presumably an American product; go figure.)

Overall, though, I expect to get a lot of usage out of this tablet. It's a great accompaniment for a laptop because it gives you a small footprint for the mouse to work in. Even if you're not an artist of any sort, you may have some fun with the digital pen. I've said it before in my other blogs: handwriting, drawing and painting massage acupuncture points in your hand, soothing many stresses away.

(c) Copyright 2005-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://hardandsoft.blogspot.com

Technorati : drawing, graphic input, graphics equipment, hardware reviews, repetitive stress disorder, sketch tablet, wacom

I know I've been remiss in posting to this hardware/software review blog. I'll post more frequently as now: at least once a week, most likely on Saturdays or Sundays.

Several months ago, while doing an exhaustive search on SourceForge for vector drawing programs similar to Adobe Illustrator, I came across Inkscape. While it's still pretty new (V 0.42) at the time of this writing, it's a delightful easy to use vector graphics program. It's not as powerful as Adobe Illustrator, but it's free and works rather well. It still occasionally crashes for me, but not as often as V0.41. And crashing doesn't cause your computer freeze, like some other programs.

Of the ten or more free or trial vector graphics packages I downloaded, this was the "optimal" one: best overall, for different features. (Expression was great. But Microsoft bought it, which may mean they'll put a price tag on it.) What I particularly like about Inkscape is that it produces XML-format SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) files as the standard storage format. You can, however, export PNG (Portable Network Graphics) bitmaps. And you can't beat those gosh darn cool stars that you can make in Inkscape:


 

(c) Copyright 2005-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://hardandsoft.blogspot.com