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Tablets are for artists, animators and illustrators, right? Wrong. Wacom’s new Bamboo tablet brings touch-sensitive input to everyone’s desktop. And since this is the Bamboo second generation, there’s a slew of new tricks in store: including smart multitouch technology. Read our full Wacom Bamboo tablet review for the full skinny.
Wacom has updated the Bamboo tablet to respond to prods and pokes from your fingers, as well as a stylus, bringing touch to everyday computing.
The new Wacom Bamboo tablet looks stunning. It’s sleek, sexy and around the size of a large mouse pad. But let’s get things straight. This isn’t a direct replacement for your mouse and keyboard, and there’s a slight learning curve to negotiate too, but slap the new Wacom Bamboo on your desk and you’ll find it hard not to use gestures, pokes and prods for more than just drawing.
Before long you’ll be zipping along, making gestures confidently and navigating just as quick as with the trusty buttonboard and rodent.
Wacom’s tablet supports multitouch, so whether you’re using it with a Mac, Windows Vista or Windows 7 it’ll open up finger-friendly shortcuts for just about everything. Drag down with two fingers and you’ll be scrolling. Flick to the side with both digits down and you’ll swipe through photos. Rotating works just fine too, and it’s easy to slip into finger gestures, rather than reaching for the mouse. But the real magic comes when you pick up the Bamboo’s stylus.
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There’s no battery inside, and the Bamboo tablet can sense when the stylus tip is approaching its surface, moving the cursor as you hover above, before clicking it when you tap down on the Bamboo’s surface. Flicking back to finger control is natural too – there’s no need to change modes or fiddle with settings: The Bamboo Fun can tell the difference between the stylus and your digits automatically.
It all works seamlessly with Windows or Mac OS X, but Wacom has also bundled its own software, including mini games and apps to get you using the stylus, as well as your fingertips, straight away.
Whatever PC or Mac you’re using, adding the new Wacom Bamboo to it makes a huge difference. You’ll save time, add a flourish to hand-signed documents, presentations or pictures, and find simply dragging the cursor around the screen becomes fun again. Well worth checking out, even if there isn’t an artistic bone in your body.
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