Fun with Bamboo

Wacom's Bamboo Fun

The Bamboo line is Wacom's first tablet aimed at general input tasks rather than specifically targeting graphics users, and priced to appeal to home users. It is similar in specifications to the most recent Graphire4 tablets. This is the Bamboo Fun -White (small edition), where it comes with a reasonable price. The quality of the packaging is certainly a worth to admire with, as all of item are well covered with foams to avoid scratches. The package comes with :

• Bamboo Fun pen tablet
• Bamboo Fun mouse
• Bamboo Fun pen
• Pen stand
• USB cable
• Quick start guide
• Installation CD (includes tablet driver and electronic user manual)
• Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 Win/4.0 Mac
• Corel Painter Essentials 3.0
• Package of 3 replacement pen nibs

The manual consist of few different languages as; English, Japanese, Korean and Mandarin , as this package is for Asian region.

The Bamboo

The tablet has a glossy finished, which make it look and feels good. The glossy surface also has an advantages where users will not leave their thumbprint marks on it.

The wireless pen(stylus) creates miracle in digital painting and illustrations, as it the best replacement for traditional tools: pencil, charcoal, paintbrush. As an addition, Wacom includes a wireless mouse which is rather fancy and it is battery-free. Like the stylus, the mouse only works on the tablet itself, or in layman term, use the tablet like a mousepad.

The Bamboo with tools

Those 4 buttons can be used for windows application functions(jump to desktop, back, forward..etc) and the touch pad surface can be use for scrolling(very useful) or zooming(i do not see any use for it). Lets no forget the blue bling-bling, which make it even more attractive.

There are 2 disc that come together in the package. The first is the driver for the tablet, which is fairly easy to be installed. By installing the driver, users will be able to configure the functions of those buttons on it: 4 buttons and a touch pad surface. The second disc consist of Corel Painter which an application for dgital painting and illustrations, and Ulead photo editing application.

2 discs: drivers and applications(corel painter/Ulead)

There are few artworks that were done using Bamboo Fun

Fairy


Mewo (eyes)


Village

Conclusions

Wacom has certainly bring the "F" back in Bamboo Fun. The difficulty in using the pen tablet is level 1, users just need to get used to it by, sketching it: hands on the tablet , eyes on the LCD. This product is great for beginners and for those who are finding for an affordable pen tablet.

The Bamboo "F"un