BT broadband office

The best £50 you ever spent on IT?

Posted 11 October 2007 at 8:42AM by Simon Dickson in IT systems and support

What's the best fifty quid you've ever spent on an IT product or service? One purchase I don't hesitate to recommend is a Wacom writing tablet, a mouse replacement which - and I'm not kidding - totally transforms your computing experience.

The mouse was invented in the early 1960s, and first entered the commercial market in the early 1980s. And whilst they're fine at what they do, computing has changed a lot lately. Even for home users, pixel-by-pixel precision matters these days, in a way it never did before. We're all doing picture and video editing, where you need to select a very specific shape in an image, or a specific frame from a video clip. We're seeing more and more software (including Vista) allowing for 'freehand' input, including respectable handwriting recognition.

For me, the mouse has had its day - and when you see behind-the-scenes video of professional graphics artists at work, there's a reason why they're using pen-based input devices. I switched to a graphics tablet about a year and a half ago, and it's amazing the difference it makes - especially when I'm editing graphics or creating presentations.

Wacom are generally recognised as the leaders in the field; and if you want, you can spend hundreds on a top-end, A4-sized tablet - but for the purposes of our Fifty Quid-Ish Challenge, let's look at the recently discontinued Volito (which I've got) or the newer Bamboo range. For that, you'll get a 20cm-square tablet which plugs in via USB, and a 'pen'. Crucially with Wacom's range, there's no cable attaching pen to tablet, and there's no need for a battery in the pen: it all works via electromagnetic resonance (apparently).

If you haven't tried a tablet before, you'll be amazed how naturally it comes. You move the pen around, as you would with a mouse. To click, there's a choice of pressing a button on the pen barrel, or 'tapping' on the tablet. You can do all the usual click-and-drag stuff that you'd expect with a mouse - but you'll find it so much easier to point to precisely the pixel you wanted.

You can pick up the new entry-level Bamboo One for about £30 if you shop around; for a little bit more, you get a slightly wider 'sensitive area' and extra navigation buttons on the tablet itself. Granted, you can pick up a new mouse for considerably less - but buy a tablet, and you'll never look back. I can't think of a better way to spend £50 on IT... but if you can, get commenting.

Tags: bamboo, electromagnetic resonance, mouse, tablet, volito, wacom

New feature: Rate this post!

Average rating: 5/5

Comments

Post a comment

As 14 days have passed, comments are now closed for this entry.