- Warner Crocker

I've recently changed my desktop computing situation picking up an iMac. I'm running both Mac's Leopard OS and Vista Ultimate in VMWare Fusion virtual machine, and was curious how Inking would work on a desktop using a Wacom Tablet.

I could have waited for Shogmaster to show me,  but picked up a Wacom Bamboo Tablet second hand and thought I'd give it a go. Like Shogmaster's video shows, handwriting recognition using Ink Well has a long way to go. I also have a long way to go in getting my hand/eye coordination in sync so I could use the Bamboo effectively to do any real Inking on the desktop when I'm running Vista.

The Bamboo Tablet is a nice little addition if you're looking to experiment with Inking on a desktop. That said, I don't think you'll be doing any serious Inking or graphics work with it. That's ok, because I don't think that's the market they are after and Wacom certainly has higher end graphics tablets to choose from. The real key here is placement of the Bamboo Tablet on your desktop to maximize how your hand works with what you see on the screen, and as you can see from the InkShow, I haven't quite found that correct placement yet. But, hey, I'll keep trying.

But on those rare occasions when I'm tied to my desktop and I might need to quickly mark up something, the Bamboo Tablet could come in quite handy. It certainly does what you need it to with OneNote 2007, Journal, and even InkSeine.

Anyway, for what it is worth, check out the InkShow and enjoy.

• Download the High Res version of InkShow.
• Check out Wacom's Bamboo Tablets

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