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Art demo of N-Trig Digital Pencil on Fujitsu Lifebook T580 (Video)

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Fujitsu and N-Trig have a little art demo on YouTube featuring the Lifebook T580 Tablet PC with N-Trig DuoSense digitizer. Special guest star: Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.

Okay, I’m mostly guessing on the guest star, but it sure looks like Sketchbook Pro to me. 20 fake bonus points* to anyone who can correct me or name the version.

Unless N-Trig has changed up their branding, this also confirms the T580 uses the battery-powered pen, not the battery-free one. I did make the effort of finding AAAA batteries in the drug store recently and realize concerns over weight and battery availability are likely overblown. As far as accuracy and sensitivity goes, well, you can see for yourself.

*Fake bonus points are redeemable for real bonus points on a one-to-one ratio. Real bonus points are redeemable for whatever you can imagine but only if it stays within your imagination.

8 Comments

8 Comments

  1. Chad Essley

    01/13/2011 at 1:51 am

    I see some serious lag with the lines appearing *after* he makes his quick strokes!

    They could have done a fast / slow line comparison. Something more fluid with lots of pressure sensitivity shown. Thin and thick lines at various speeds. You know, the real important stuff!

    But honestly, this video isn’t a very good test. It’s edited to look intuitive and natural, but as a long time user, I can plainly see issues. I can just hear the director of the video saying oooh.. do that zoom thing with the drawings.. Like.. like a Ken Burns effect! Lol! The built in zoom in Sketchbook Pro: (Cursor disappears while zooming and dragging the pen.) You’ll see the round cursor pop back into place as soon as he’s done zooming each image.)

    Artrage and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro work without the wintab specification, and I can see in this video that the “digital pencil” still lags behind in one of the fastest drawing apps out there. Sketchbook Pro.

    I’ll be doing some reviews in the next few months of various tablets for John Hill at Allegiance Technology Partners in the coming months. The new Asus slate with Wacom digitizer head to head against an NTrig digitizer, using the same software. (Both wintab specific and non.) Look out for them.

    Still, I’m glad to see a video done like this, in a pointed effort to get artists specifically interested in the Tablet PC, as they should have done from the beginning. Better late than never!

    Keep at it Ntrig. Competition is a good thing.
    C

  2. T Lewis

    01/13/2011 at 8:17 am

    He doesn’t rest his hand on the screen. Palm rejection is the bugaboo of drawing on touch enabled Tabpcs. On my Wacom-based Fujitsu tablet, touch is automatically switched off when the stylus nears the screen.

    But the automatic switch doesn’t seem to happen with this N-trig screen, given the awkward positions the artist twists into to avoid contact. I’ve read that the hp500 slate (with n-trig) lacks palm rejection. If true – if n-trig technology won’t allow you to set your palm on the screen while drawing – then this video is crap…a kind of lie. No way can you have a professional relationship with a tabpc/slate with that flaw.

    The app is Sketchbook Pro, of course. Version 2010, I think…SKP 2011 has a slightly different layers menu (but the vid’s so zoomy and jumpy, it’s honestly hard to tell).
    T Lewis

    • Sumocat

      01/13/2011 at 2:51 pm

      I wouldn’t read anything into him not resting his hand on the screen. I noticed that too, but I believe this guy is a traditional paint artist who is trained to not touch the canvas while painting. Avoiding contact is probably as natural to him as resting our hand on the screen is to us.

    • dstrauss

      01/13/2011 at 6:31 pm

      I agree with Sumocat; I also have an HP Slate 500, and it does offer palm rejection, but is not as accurate as in the Wacom digitizers so you sometimes get stray marks or movements. If I’m in a serious inking situation I turn off touch altogether.

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