Product: Graphire
From: Wacom (www.wacom.com)
For: Windows 95OSR2 (with USB supplement) and Win98, Windows 2000; USB-capable Mac. (A serial version is also available.)
Price: US$99
Tested Drivers: as supplied on CD ROM (Windows 2000 drivers on website)
Pros: Easy to install USB tablet and requires no external power; includes cordless pressure-sensitive pen and cordless, three-button "scrolling wheel" mouse. Includes Painter Classic and drivers on CD.
Cons: Small active surface. MS Office integration features not available on Macintosh. USB version does not support Windows NT.
The Graphire is a USB- or serial-based 4x5" tablet that ships with both a pressure-sensitive, cordless pen and a "ball-less" and cordless mouse that, like the pen, operates by sensing its position on the tablet. Both pen and mouse work without requiring batteries. The tablet, which contains a small status light to let you know that it is plugged in and active, is actually larger than its 4x5" active area, and is about the size of a mouse pad and only a little thicker. The pad includes a removable pen holder and a clear plastic cover, which may be lifted and a piece of paper inserted underneath, allowing you to trace over existing artwork with the pen.
We weren't especially fond of the feel of the mouse supplied with the tablet -- primarily due to the unnerving scraping noise the mouse made when scrubbed across the pad's surface. However, this same surface seems ideal for use with the pen, so we can't really complain. The mouse tracked reasonably well, and its scrolling wheel functions nearly identically to that of Microsoft's pricey Intellimouse Explorer -- also a "ball-less" mouse. A Wacom control panel allows customization of mouse and pen behaviour.
The famed pressure-sensitive pen is, of course, the real reason to buy a Wacom tablet. The pen that comes with the Graphire is batteryless and includes an eraser function that works just like the "analog" pencil equivalent: you flip the pen upside-down and erase your lines or paint-strokes with the "eraser end." It's very natural, and the pressure-sensitive pen can, in the hands of an artist, produce artwork that looks very much like a hand-drawn equivalent. Better still, it feels remarkably natural for an artist to create computer graphics this way. If you come from a fine arts background, this is the way to paint or draw on a computer.
Virtually all of the popular Windows and Mac graphics titles support the pen's pressure-sensitive mode. The product ships with PenTools, a set of pressure-sensitive Photoshop plug-ins, MetaCreations' Painter Classic and, for Windows only, Paragraph's Pentools SE. We also tested the pad with several third-party titles, including the full versions of Painter 6.0, Photoshop 5.5, and Adobe Illustrator 8.01.
We also had a blast using the pen to "spin" a virtual clay model in Play Inc.'s Amorphium, a 3-D program that exploits the pressure-sensitive Wacom pen's capabilities to simulate rather convincingly, the feel of clay on a potter's wheel. We also tested the USB tablet successfully under the final release of Windows 2000, using beta drivers on Wacom's website. (The drivers for the serial version of the tablet are also on the site, in final release format.)
The Wacom readme file that accompanies the tablet lists a few caveats: using the pen to double-click inside a field in QuarkXpress freezes the screen cursor unless you also have a PS/2 or serial mouse connected. Weird, but workable. A few other programs, including MS Access 2.0, MS Project 4.0 and QuickBooks Pro 5.0 also suffer from this odd quirk.
The Graphire differs from the company's more expensive Intuos line of tablets in several ways. Most notably, the Intuos has several optional pens and other input device options not available to Graphire owners, including a so-called 4D Mouse, an Airbrush, and optional "stroking" pen models. There are other differences, too. The Graphire only senses 512 levels of pressure sensitivity; the Intuos detects a full 1024, making pressure-sensitive work more precise and responsive. As the specs on Wacom's website attest, the Intuos is slightly more accurate, tracking at an accuracy of +- .01" compared to the Graphire's .02. This is a side-effect of the Intuos tablet's 2540 lines per inch resolution. The Graphire resolves 1015 lines per inch -- less, it's true, but still not too shabby.
On the downside, we found the serial-based Intuos tablet we tested (and reviewed separately) somewhat more troublesome to configure than the Graphire. It wouldn't allow the use of one of our serial ports, despite the fact that the port was working and was seemingly not in use. (It turned out that an Infrared driver for the Real Magic Hollywood Plus DVD decoder card's remote control was causing it to report that it was busy.) The serial port version is also less convenient to set up -- the USB version automatically recognizes the tablet and enables the pen as soon as it is plugged in; the serial version does not. Indeed, we suspect the serial version of the Graphire would be likely to suffer from the same problems -- we recommend going for the USB model if your system supports it.
Recommended, but graphics pros will like the company's 6x8" or 9x12" Intuos tablets (or other sizes, preferably connected via USB) even better.
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