Ugly ink from Vista+Intuos3/Cintiq - please help!

[symphonic1985]

Hi everyone,

I bought an Intuos3 to pair with my Vista laptop so that I can ink my equations in notes and email...

... but as Shogmaster found, the ink experience is AWFUL in apps like Onenote and Journal (i.e. all INK apps). You get terribly shaky lines. [ Evernote looks smooth so it must have a different API.]

I'm hoping that Shogmaster or someone else has found out more about this problem. In a prior post, he mentioned that it may have to do with the excessive pressure sensitivity from Intuos3/Cintiq's. If anyone has a Graphire or Bamboo with 512 (or 256) levels of pressure sensitivity, do they mind posting a sample image of their handwriting in Onenote? When you enlarge the text you get a good idea of the quality of the vector image.

[img]uploads/3483/Onenote_vs_evernote.PNG[/img]


I'm desperate for any information!

Thanks,
Sam

[sbtablet]

Yikes! I know nothing about the world of Bamboo/Cintique, but I'm wondering if it is possible to tweak settings on the device specifically for one program (One Note) that could help with this. Looks painful.

[symphonic1985]

Yeah it has me pretty bummed. At first I thought I had some isolated driver issue, but I think this happens with all of them! I wanted to get a tablet PC but they're way more expensive in Australia. I figured that a professional level external tablet would give at least as good ink quality... Crazy.

As a user, you can control pressure curves for each program individual, but can't reduce the number of pressure levels or anything like that. And Onenote looks equally bad if you enable/disable pressure sensitivity within the program. It's the way the tablet communicates with the API, I think. Either Wacom or Microsoft are being very slack - especially since they are marketing the external tablets+Vista as a tablet PC alternative.

[KenHinckley]

I have this problem too. It's a little more subtle than what you show, but for ink that I care about how it looks, I can't do it on the Cintiq. The ink on my actual tablet PC's looks much better.

I haven't had time to try an investigate this or narrow down what the actual problem might be.

[KenHinckley]

I forgot to say I see this in all my apps: OneNote, Journal, InkSeine too. I don't have Evernote installed on the machine with my Cintiq.

[symphonic1985]

Hi Ken,



I was actually going to email you about this stuff once I'd found out

more - I'm the Sam who emailed you a couple of weeks ago. Looking over

the net, I'm only found a couple of links related to this problem:

http://www.technologyquestions.com/t...ntiq-21ux.html

http://www.gottabemobile.com/forum/f...s.asp?TID=4980



The screen dump from the former,

http://homepage.swissonline.ch/mathc...1UXvsT4210.png

looks very much like the crap ink that I've been seeing.



So your Onenote stuff doesn't look quite so bad? Do you mind posting a

quick snip?



I can't believe that I'm seriously considering taking a loss and

downgrading to an inferior tablet because the top of the line ones

produce rubbish in Vista's ink apps... I'm going to get the Wacom

support staff to send me some snips of what the ink should look from

their different tablets, which should be enlightening.



Sam

Hi Sam,
No need in downgrading.
At least my Bamboo Tablet produces the same ugly ink.
Very disappointing experience.
Yours, kindly
Carsten

[symphonic1985]

Hey Carsten,

So there's no escape! I for one feel pretty misled - they manage to gloss over this problem at the website. And I even suspect that some of their screen shots are either touched up or produced using a tablet PC.

If there's anyone else who's disappointed with the ink from their Wacom tablet, could they please note their displeasure on this forum? The Wacom forum is down so we can't complain there, but at least I can direct them here to show them some dissatisfied customers.

It's a pretty sorry state when one of the true ambassadors/leaders of digital ink in Ken Hinkley can't get acceptable ink quality from their most expensive product. Whether it's their Virtual HID that's the problem, or if Microsoft's API is at fault, something needs to be done!

Here they are trying to break into a new market, and it's as if they don't expect as to notice anything's wrong...

Sam

[tfeston]

sam,

i tested it out here on my emachine slow as crap vista box with the 6.08 driver and cintiq21, it worked fine and smooth.

here's a screen shot, i blew up a portion to show you what it looks like up close.







Edited by: tfeston

[sbtablet]

Be sure to post what the fix is, I really want to know, and I don't even own a Wacom tablet!