Nashville Area Business Guide

Comment from R. Kamand
Time February 2, 2010 at 9:58 am

I have previously had two other wacom tablets, a graphire and a intuos. I do a lot of photoshop work and i have come to really depend on wacom tablets, so, when my old tablet bit the dust i decide to give this one a try. I had very little interest in the touch feature and thank god for that because it’s not even up to trackpad standards. There are a few things about it that are cool, but it’s just too fickle to use on a daily basis.

I figured that since the tablet had the same sensitivity as the intuous 3 it would give me the same feel. WRONG. Now, perhaps i received a lemon, and from some of the reviews it may be, but this thing is awful. it’s not only the sensitivity either, the express keys will sometimes work and then for some reason will not respond. Even if i did receive a bad tablet i still can not get pass the feel of the included pen. This thing feels as if it was hacked together by a blind woodsman. This is basic stuff here, this is why i need a tablet and my needs are not being meet.

I debated whether to buy this tablet or the intuos 4 and i guess i made the wrong decision.
Rating: 2 / 5

Comment from Paul Sullivan
Time February 2, 2010 at 10:41 am

Wacom’s Bamboo Fun Pen and Touch is not for you if you’re interested in the touch features and looking at this for use with regular non-graphics files ie, excel, word, acrobat. The sensitivity is not there for fine, fluid work.

For instance, a lot of the touch functionality comes from using 1 and/or 2 fingers, but the tablet struggles to register what you intended. Put 2 fingers down together and half the time the tablet thinks you are scrolling and the other half it thinks you want the right click menu. LIkewise, selecting text and then bringing up the right click menu is virtually impossible without inadvertently deselecting. Practice over a couple of weeks did not help.

Bamboo Fun does not make use of more than 2 fingers.

Beyond zoom, rotate, and scroll, there are several gestures that are promoted in the marketing videos, but do not appear to be supported or at least are not documented.

Support Manuals and Read Me’s are typically cumbersome and poorly arranged.

The software is stingy in the range of settings. For instance, the scrolling function is so “loose” that it’s hard to avoid scrolling horizontally when trying to scroll just vertically. This is a pain when scrolling a wide text and you keep losing one side or the other. There’s no setting to allow for just one direction scrolling. Something my $20 wheel mouse offers.

Some of the sensitivity issues mentioned above might be eliminated if you could turn off or calibrate certain functions, but that’s not available.

As for programming the buttons, they don’t seem to register multiple modifers like shift AND option.

Another odd thing. The eraser on the pen cannot be programmed as other than eraser which does no one any good in any but a graphics program.

Design wish: make the pen and touch areas the same (there’s only a 1/4″ or so difference) and then put in a perimeter band of a slightly different texture so my fingers know when they near the edge.
Rating: 1 / 5

Comment from LRL, Jr
Time February 2, 2010 at 1:02 pm

This is my second attempt at incorporating a touch pad / pen into my system.

The first was a brand that shall remain in the recycling bin, where the product ended its’ life.

The Bamboo Fun has exceeded my expectation! I use it mostly with “Paint Shop Pro Photo X2″. But, it works very well with all of my software.

My System is: Windows XP with all the sevice packs and updates, P4 2.53MHz cpu & 2MB of RAM.

Bottom line, I’m VERY happy with the Bamboo Fun!

Larry L.

Wacom Bamboo Fun
Rating: 5 / 5

Comment from Shopperholic
Time February 2, 2010 at 3:44 pm

I really wanted this product to replicate the multi-touch trackpad on my new Macbook. Once you’ve used those large trackpads with scrolling and panning, etc., you find it hard to settle for a normal windows trackpad. (It is really the only thing I like better about the Mac) I also have a great handwriting recognition software called ritepen that I got with a previous tablet, and it does a great job of reading my lousy handwriting. Unfortunately, at least on my Windows Vista laptop, the Bamboo Fun doesn’t quite cut it. It took multiple attempts to install to get it working properly but after the third or fourth time it did install. It doesn’t perform that great, however, it gets laggy at times and once twice went into full spaz mode with the cursor jumping everywhere.

I’m still rating it pretty highly as I loved the pressure sensitivity. It works a lot better than my previous tablet and I was having some serious fun in Paint Shop Pro. It was also really nice to have that large area to draw upon. On my 13.3 Macbook and my 14″ Win laptop the tablet lays nicely atop the keyboard and has little rubber feet that are perfectly situated to keep it off the keyboard. I don’t know if i would work on a bigger laptop. It matches my aluminum Macbook, for those who like aesthetics. The inclusion of Nikon Efex 3.0 was a nice surprise. Those filters are useful, but way too pricey for me. I was pretty happy to get them in this bundle. I think that Wacom, who is known for decent support, will tweak the drivers and alleviate the problems I’ve had.
Rating: 4 / 5

Comment from Mina Caliente
Time February 2, 2010 at 6:10 pm

I love this gadget. Works great with photo shop, corel etc. For the money and great price at Amazon it is money well spent on all my graphic projects. The quality alone for the price is great. Can’t even imagine how great their higher end products are. Luv ya WACOM!
Rating: 5 / 5