Digital Home Thoughts: WACOM Intuos3 6x8 Tablet

Disclaimer
Unfortunately I am about as good of an artist as an eight-year-old. Although my stick figures are amazing, they are still a work in progress so you will not get to see them. Since I can’t demonstrate the true potential of this product, I will let the features speak for themselves.

A lot of thought on the part of Wacom went into packaging this product. Not only will you get the uber brush set (more on that later) but you also get some nifty software from Corel and Adobe. Let’s dig in.

The Hardware
The package includes the tablet itself, a stylus, tip replacements, a mouse, the software bundle CD, and the driver CD. Since this product is aimed at professionals as well as amateurs, the build quality is fantastic. The tablet itself was very solid and passed any kind of “creak” test I attempted to administer. The tablet is anchored by four rubber strips and since this device is USB powered, it only has one cord sticking out from the corner. Speaking of the corner, there are cord openings on both sides of the upped left corner to ease placement within your workspace. It amazes me of the little things these people think of. The tablet itself is very ergonomically shaped. My wrist felt very comfortable on the slope leading up to the touch sensitive area. The buttons near the upper corners of the device have a nice tactile feel while the scroll pad was just a touch of genius. This kind of “elegant solutions” mentality rubbed off on the other pieces of the device. The pen did not feel flimsy and the buttons on the pen had a nice *click* to them. The mouse also got the design treatment, although it lacks the comfort of your average Microsoft or Logitech mice. It felt a bit too small to be comfortable over long periods of time, but there is a reason why it is so odd. Wacom makes several sizes of these tablets and while I have plenty of real-estate on my “medium” model, the smaller model would definitely have issues with a big mouse over a relatively small contact area.


Figure 1: The pen is mightier than the mouse. This puts the touch real-estate in perspective.


Figure 2: The ergonomic design of the tablet allows for hours of mentally frustrating work without any physical consiquences.


Figure 3: The design is very elegant and I really enjoyed having the cloth bottom on the pen holder and the mouse. Desk scratching be gone!