Wacom Bamboo - an excellent artist's tool
A Wacom tablet is a tool used by artists to design work on the computer using a natural pen and paper motion.
The tablet is hard and flat and the stylus that you draw with looks like a pen. The Wacom tablet is pressure sensitive providing the ability to draw thicker or heavier lines depending on the amount of pressure that you apply while drawing.
The stylus has a pen tip end and an "eraser" end. As you draw and design you can erase your mistakes by turning the stylus over and erasing with the other end as you would with a pencil.
Wacom has recently released the Bamboo. Although cheaper than previous models, the Bamboo is everything that most artists want in a tablet.
Previous Wacom tablets have come with a stylus and a mouse-type puck. The Bamboo gets rid of the puck and the included software is oriented for artists and office work such has handwriting and signature software.
The Bamboo is extremely sexy with a high gloss finish, four buttons and a cool touchpad that helps you scroll and use your finger rather than the stylus to get around. This is an easy substitute for the missing mouse puck as it doesn't require switching pointing utensils.
I bought the Bamboo at Office Depot for $79 and that may be the only place you can find it offline in America as even Wacom's website claims that it is only available over seas. Perhaps that is something they need to update on their site though.
If there is one drawback to the Bamboo it is that it is missing a plastic overlay. Previous Wacom tablets have had an attached thick plastic overlay that allows you to place art work or photos behind for tracing into the computer. This isn't a big issue though as you can easily tape art work to the bad and get the same results. Overlays are also fairly unnecessary an a 3x5 tablet anyway as little art work is that small.
I am extremely impressed with the Bamboo for the price and performance. All Wacom tablets are excellent but Wacom has really put out a great product in the Bamboo for folks who want all of the performance in a small price.