Comments on: Tablet Stylus Mouse?

By: val

val — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:58:44 +0000

I am looking for a pen I can use to draw and write figures and sums in realtime. It needs to be in real time as I want to record onscreen my tutorials I am ainstructor..I am using XP. I have used a few pens but it has delays and difficult to write properly. Any suggestions. I tried Intellipn.

By: MightySandwich

MightySandwich — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:32:13 +0000

I also have the Wacom Graphire 4×5 tablet. It came with Photoshop Elements 3 and Corel Painter Essentials 2, which I have been playing around with quite a bit. I recently bought Corel Painter X (Education Edition) for $85, and have found the pen to be an excellent input device.

I do, however, get the most use out of the mouse. It makes long sessions on my MacBook much easier, despite the fact that the trackpad on the MacBook is the best I’ve ever used. It has Back-Forward buttons on the 4×5 surface, and both the surface and mouse have scroll wheels. There are even buttons on the pen, though I must admit that they were a bit to hard and plasticky for my liking.

Overall, the Graphire tablet serves as a solid pen/mouse peripheral for both graphics and more commonplace activities. Best of all, it operates without any batteries whatsoever!

By: Kevin "Shinmaryuu" Money

Kevin "Shinmaryuu" Money — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 09:40:51 +0000

Chis from this video forward they are not showing up in iTubes via the RSS feed.

By: Kevin "Shinmaryuu" Money

Kevin "Shinmaryuu" Money — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 09:40:51 +0000

Chis from this video forward they are not showing up in iTubes via the RSS feed.

By: Martin Cohen

Martin Cohen — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 22:37:56 +0000

I use a trackball for general use (on all computers) and a Wacom Graphire 4×5 (about $90) with its mouse and stylus when I need more precision.

This is on a c2d macbook pro 15″ and desktop pc.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:42:44 +0000

Can the Wacom Tablet be used for text like the tablet pc’s can?

By: Michel Clasquin

Michel Clasquin — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:58:27 +0000

I have a Wacom Graphire4 and once you are used to the pen, doing any pixel editing with a mouse is like painting with a brick. The Graphire also has its own cordless mouse so you can drop the pen and mouse around photoshop’s menus, for which the pen just feels wrong if you have many years of mous-cle memory (geddit?) to overcome.

But for any other work, I go back to my Apple mighty mouse. There’s not even any need to unplug the one and plug in the other: the mighty mouse and the graphire are both permanently plugged into USB ports and I can switch from one to the other seamlessly (no, there’s just one cursor on-screen). I just pick up whichever of the three pointing devices is most suitable at the time and start working. If there is a downside, I haven’t found it yet.

Upshot: If you do graphics work, even just on a hobbyist level, get one of these tablets. If not, don’t bother.