Two Pads, One Pen

I think WACOM's pen technology is some pretty interesting stuff; about a year ago, I set about constructing my own Cintiq using whatever was available to the average consumer. In doing so, I learned a lot about how a WACOM tablet works, and what can interfere with the reception of the pen. While I never completed construction of my own Cintiq, I did play around with the WACOM Intuous on a Powerbook for a short time after seeing a video of someone who had crammed a WACOM Graphire inside a 800mhz Titanium Powerbook.

I had started this project in January of 2007, and lazily worked on it until stopping in October, when the announcement of the Cintiq 12WX was made in the UK.

A few months ago, I purchased a WACOM Cintiq 12WX Pen Display. After using it for a few hours, it became very clear to me that even if I had managed to hack the hardware together to make a Cintiq, the software would still be lacking in the functionality that the Cintiq provides (such as a way to calibrate the pen to the screen, and quickly tabbing between screens).

Lenovo has produced a Thinkpad that has a WACOM tablet built in. Rather than using the WACOM Penabled technology that most Tablet PCs use, they are instead making it a traditional WACOM tablet, meaning that right next to the trackpad is a larger pad for the WACOM pen to draw on. The Lenovo W700 has a rather interesting looking wristrest:

The Lenovo W700 features a 17" display, a 512MB or 1GB graphics card, Pantone Color Sensor, and a Core 2 Duo T9400 (2.53GHz 1066MHz 6MBL2) with 2 GB of RAM (expandable up to 8GB) for $2900 -- this is a serious machine aimed at graphics professionals, but I have serious reservations over the actual use of the built-in WACOM tablet. While most artists I know use WACOM tablets, most of them use nothing smaller than a 6x8 pad, and the Thinkpad's is a small 120mm x 80mm (4.73 x 3.15 inches), which is smaller than their smallest tablet available, the old 4x3 (147.6mm x 92.3mm) , which limits the W700's WACOM use to little more than a novelty. Also, notice that there are no extra ExpressKeys for customization, nor any TouchStrips which normally are on the professional-level Intuous models of their WACOM Tablets. Considering the size of the laptop, Lenovo would have better off with a WACOM board that fit under the screen of the laptop, making it a Cintiq-type tablet. For $99, one can purchase a small WACOM Bamboo Fun which is larger than the built-in pad, and includes a mouse in addition to the pen and tablet at a cost less than the cost of the W700's upgrade to the Wacom Tablet. The additional $51, of course is in convenience; you never have to carry a Tablet with your laptop, and the pen is stowed away Nintendo DS style in the base of the computer.