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back to article Wacom Bamboo Fun S Pen and Touch

Take TWO pointing devices into the shower? Not me, I use Wac-and-Go. When I first saw this product demonstrated – a graphics tablet with pressure-sensitive stylus but whose surface equally supports touch gestures – I thought I’d seen the best creative gadget ever. Wacom Bamboo Fun S Pen and Touch graphics tablet Wacom's …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I had one of the smaller pro Wacom tablets, with mouse, for years. It was excellent, until the mouse finally gave out. I replaced it with a Bamboo. The tablet is fine, but the mouse has some felt-like material that wore away in about a year. Very poor quality. I now use it as a mousepad for a conventional wired mouse --- but it is there for the rare occasions when I do need to do some graphic work.

    Mine is the early Bamboo model. Obviously, from this review, things have changed, and I haven't seen the new model. If I was buying again, though, I'd try to spend the extra on one from the professional range. It wouldn't be fair to write off the Bamboo as a toy, but it would be fair to say that the higher-range tablets are made as tools for professionals.

    The good news is ... they work with Linux. Or at least, in my experience, with Ubuntu.

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    1. david 63
      Reply Icon

      Upvote...

      ...for anticipating my whine that it wasn't going to work on my Ubuntu box.

      Thanks.

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  2. Luther Blissett

    *** stunned ***

    That is one hell of an opening line. Is there an industry award for this sort of thing? (or is it just the good ol' boys in the business that get it on a Buggins' turn basis).

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  3. Luther Blissett

    Hmmm

    I'm looking at this a as MIDI instrument controller - two axes plus pressure sensitivity, with bonus buttons, and 4 function modifiers - potentially tasty. Outputs will be in the range 0..127, so there would seem to be the resolution available at the UI, even if it turns out the pressure input is limited by quantization (as some MIDI keyboards are). I'd be interested to know in what applications/operations its response is perceptibly slow. The last Wacom tablet I had simply inserted its output into the mouse event queue, which is the sort of thing I'd need, nothing fancier.

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  4. Luther Blissett

    OK

    Gestures are optional. Also http://www.livelab.dk/tablet2midi.php if anyone else is interested.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Further to my last post

    I understand that the pro models have more levels of sensitivity. Again, mine is an older model of Bamboo, but you might want to check this out re your requirements.

    More generally...

    Wacom seem to think we can do without a mouse. Personally, I find that really hard. I find the pen about as good for ordinary mouse work as ... a mouse is for drawing. I guess it is just a matter of getting used to it.

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  6. N13L5

    Wacom should have built this based on an lcd screen, this is just yesteryear's lunch warmed over

    lcd screens that size are cheap and would really make this useful.

    I guess Wacom didn't want to compete with its own, big and ridiculously priced lcd clunker.

    Someone's hopefully going to come in and eat their lunch with a reasonably priced ~$300 tablet thats based on a 10" lcd screen, so your work is more direct.

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  7. Shig
    FAIL

    Were you living under a rock 3 years ago when the Bamboo Pen&Touch originally came out?

    Because this is basically the same thing.

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