My New Toy ...er Tool

In my my never ending search for cool tools/toys, I plow through hundreds, nay thousands, of blog posts that encompass photography, technology, writing, creativity and pop culture each week, hoping to find a useful tool. Sure there are many cool things out there, but useful? Not so much.

I've been drooling over this product since I learned of its existence in a post over at the blog Seven by Five. And now ... I can drool no more.

Enter my new Wacom Bamboo Fun tablet. Here's a pic of it.

My take on it so far...

• Physical Attibutes: 
• It's slightly bigger than my laptop. 
• The table finish matches the laptop. And friends and family will know I like things to be organized, and to match.

• Hands-On Usage: (limited to writing)

• The handwriting recognition is decent, except for the occasional double spaces between words and the jumbled mess of characters. 
• It's easy to customize and adjust.
• I have two surfaces for multi-touch: my trackpad and my tablet.
• On a Mac computer, I can write on a Ink window program to capture my scribblings or for handwriting recognition, or write on top of a page in my word-processor of choice.  Drawings, as far as I can tell, can only be made in the Ink window or a drawing software. It would be nice if I could just draw within Scrivener.

For the days I want to handwrite out my words, instead of typing, I can just break out my tablet. And the software will take care of the typing for me. After writing 249 pages by hand and probably just as many to go, the thought of typing each page leaves my fingers aching. While using the table might take a little time to get the input correct, it will probably save my lots of time later.

My revision course requires that I must hand write my revision with pen and paper, then type my words later. I've gone through five pens and several packs of paper. But with the tablet, I can export my handwriting scrawlings as is and send them to a word-processor, like Scrivener and Pages, as pictures.

And who knew it could be so environmentally friendly? Using the tablet will help from killing so many trees as the need for printouts will be less, as I'll be able to add handwritten comments right on the screen. As soon as I can figure out how to do it.

As an added bonus, the tablet came with photo editing and painting software. I've installed the drivers on the family computer for when the urge to test out my tablet for photo editing comes upon me. And I know it will.

I am hoping the missed word occurrences will decrease as I get more comfortable with the tool. Overall, I'm pleased with my purchase and try to use it as much as I can during my writing sessions.

Anyways, just thought I'd share.