I didn't know that pressure senstive pens were this good.
Written: Jan 07 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Sensitive, customisable, lots of free software
Cons: Scratchy mouse, small tablet area
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| cloxie's Full Review: Wacom Graphire Pen & Mouse Set |
My wonderful husband bought this for me as a gift. I do a lot of hand painting and have always been interested in using one of these to see if my skills could translate to computer graphics programs if I could only use a pen or brush.
Woo hoo! This is the coolest device ever. I love this thing. The pressure sensitive bit has blown me away completely. I use Paint Shop Pro and you can set up the brushes to do various things in relation to the pressure sensitive pen. It's taking some getting used to, but it certainly has a whole lot of promise.
The tablet relates directly to the screen: you use the left hand corner of the tablet, you get the cursor in the left hand corner of the screen. This is great, but takes some time to adjust to. I still keep attempting to drag the cursor to move it, but that's because I'm so used to a mouse. It also means that movements need to be smaller than you normally make them with a mouse. That's another adjustment to make.
The tablet is very reactive, though, and I like the fact that you hover to move the cursor and touch on the tablet to click. That makes life a lot easier than it would if you had to hit one of the buttons on the pen.
The buttons are not my favorite thing, but I cannot think of a better solution. There is only one button, which is a long, thin thing, and you press the bottom of it for a right click and the top for a double-click. I have found tapping the pen on the tablet for a double click fine, but I find the button for the right-click hard to hold onto comfortably for an extended period. It's still preferable to two buttons, because these would make the pen more uncomfortable to hold and you'd need to look at them to check you were hitting the right one. The long button also acts as a kind of stabilizer for the pen, as you can rest your hand alongside it.
It also has a built in eraser on the top of the pen, just like a normal pencil, and this is a very cute addition. It works just like the pen end but saves you having to select an eraser mode. Great idea.
I don't like the feel of the mouse very much, as I seem to need to pick it up and reposition it quite a lot (probably due to the small size of the tablet). It also seems quite scratchy, but then again I am spoiled by using a Logitech MouseMan on a gel mouse pad, and that thing just glides. However, the mouse does have a scroll button on it and that's a great thing in my book. And I thought that the mouse could be used anywhere, not just on the tablet. Not much point in it being cordless if that's the case.
I must confess that I am left handed when I draw, but right handed when I mouse, so my use of the Wacom mouse is with my left hand and feels really alien. I'm keeping my Logitech handy on the right side of the keyboard!
The set comes with some cute software. I really like the Sensiva software that allows you to perform many actions by writing a single letter with the pen. And the on-screen scribble pad thingy (ParaGraph Pen Office). This lets you draw on your screen with the pen and then saves the image for you to share with others. This is great if you're someone who likes to annotate things (or if you have a monitor who's screen is covered in fingerprints, like mine!). It also has a special function, which makes it able to scribble directly on Microsoft Word documents, and saves the scribbles as Word items directly in the page.
The other software is graphics based and I've already got enough of that, but it does seem like good stuff if you're just starting out and need some graphics software.
The set up of the mouse and pen is fully customizable, and you can adjust pretty much anything to make it suit your needs. It comes with some plug-ins for any Photoshop compatible program, and these work great in my Paint Shop Pro sketches.
I wouldn't recommend it for general use, such as surfing the net or browsing through your files, as it involves a lot more hand movement than a regular mouse.
In conclusion, it might take some getting used to and a little adjustment period, but it certainly seems worthwhile. I'm off to play now...
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
cloxie
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Reviews written: 9
Trusted by: 3 members
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