Years ago, I settled on a few trusted input devices. At the office, I use a Kensington Orbit trackball and a Griffin PowerMate for scrolling. At home, I use an Apple Magic Mouse. On the road, I use nothing more than my laptop's trackpad.
I consider these things old friends (even the youngish Magic Mouse) and I've been loath to switch. But switch I did.
Wacom, longtime leaders in the tablet market (not the Android/iPad kind, but the pen-and-slate kind your design nerd friends use in place of a mouse) has revamped its consumer line of Bamboo tablets, and I decided to dive in fingers-first.
Wacom loaned me the Bamboo Connect, its new entry-level pen-only tablet that retails for $80. Also debuting this week is the Capture ($100), a tablet which combines pen input and touch input so you can use gestures, and the Create ($200), a larger version of the Capture. Both higher-end tablets have programmable buttons next to the touch-sensitive surface so you can set up hotkeys and other shortcuts. Both higher-end Bamboos also have the option to go wireless via a tiny add-on module ($40), but otherwise connect over USB.
I spent a full month testing the basic, pen-only Connect, which is meant to replace the mouse. It seemed like the best fit for a tablet newbie like myself. The slightly rubberized stylus is very light and comfortable to hold. It's about twice the girth of a normal ballpoint pen and operates without a battery. To move the cursor on the screen, you just slide your hand around, letting the tip of the pen float a half-centimeter over the tablet's surface. A tap of the pen translates to a mouse click. Tap and drag, and you get a marquee selection.
There's a rocker switch on the pen that sits beneath your fingertips. It feels like an oversized version of the volume rocker on a smartphone. Rock it toward the pen's tip and it goes into scroll mode – the cursor stays put, but the movements of the pen instead let you scroll through pages or lists. Rock the switch towards the back of the pen and it acts like a right-click, bringing up context-sensitive menus. You can change all of these behaviors in the settings – if you are drawing with it in Sketchbook Pro, you can set the rocker to act as an eraser instead of a right-click, for example.
Some of my friends are tablet devotees, and they all told me it would take a week or two to get comfortable with the pen. And they were so very right. I struggled the first few days, not only with accuracy, but with rhythm – when you're typing and you want to point at something, you have to stop, reach over and pick up the pen. This slowed me down and bugged me at first, but it soon became second nature. But by week two, my penmanship almost matched my mousemanship, touchscreenmanship and trackballmanship.