ack .. new bamboo?.. old bamboo?.. who bamboo?

..I FINALLY found my waccum bamboo fun pad and got it working again..

however, I see theres a NEW type of bamboo fun out now..

soooo.. should I buy the new one or keep my old one?...

..siiighh.. this could be a life changing event.. (*maybe I can deduct it on my next years taxs *)

anyone have any waccum tables that they like other then the bamboo models?...

Johnnykat bought a Waccom around Christmas time and he really likes it! It is an Intuos 4 medium sized.

Tablets come up quite often. I suppose I should add that to my sticky, or at least a 'Peripherals' section.

The biggest difference between the old bamboo and the new one is the new one has 1024 levels of pressure sensitivty and the old one had 512

the new one also ditched the mouse. I just bought one for my sister, sadly i don't know that she has used it yet.

I like my Wacom Intuos 4 and I don't use the Wacom mouse.

I use a Wacom Inuos 4 - medium (8.8 by 5.5 inch), 2048 pressure levels, nice extra function buttons and a function wheel. But it was a little pricey. (I used to have a older, smaller one and always felt cramped. Was glad when I was finally able to afford this one).

I don't use the mouse, mostly because I don't have room on my computer desk to leave the tablet up all the time & when I do use the tablet, its in my lap, in front of the keyboard. So, the tab-mouse wouldn't be in the right place.

I use a mouse for some things (like polygonal lasso selecting) because its a little easier for me to do than with the pen (I find I all too often click too fast and it thinks its a double-click and closes the selection too soon).

I use the pressure for brush size, or effect strength mostly. The greater pressure sensitivity levels allows for a bit more subtlety, although that assumes that I'm capable of that level of pen control (which I'm still struggling with).

I expect to be thankful for the pressure sensitivity even more once I get into using 3d Coat for modeling and normal-mapping. But thats a little ways off.

Hi,
The added pressure sensitivity helps with opacity as mentioned above. I think it also allows your brush strokes to taper more smoothly so they are thick in the middle and thin at the ends (if you have brush dynamics enabled).

If you get alot of use out of your bamboo, it MIGHT be worth upgrading to the new bamboo, but it would probably be better to save a little longer and upgrade to an intuos 3 or 4 with a slightly larger pad size. (in my opinion)

I bought an intuos3 and used it regularly for 3 years then I actually saved up enough to get a used cintiq on ebay and I love it. I use it everyday. It sure was a big purchase but I do so much freelance work that it has been very useful and worth the investment. There is no way i would have bought one before I tried out the much cheaper intuos.

There is a pretty good WACOM folder at conceptart.org: http://conceptart.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=155 that might provide you with more opinions.

PS (I never use the mouse either.) hope that helps!

This is a darn good thread! I'd been browsing on Sunday to try and find some helpful guidance regarding a new tablet but came up with very little, so the collected reviews and suggestions and opinions here are really very useful and interesting.

I have a Wacom Volito 2, which is quite old. It's supposed to be pressure-sensitive, but in practice doesn't weem to want to go there. Also, the work area is smaller than 5"x4" which is pretty cramped.

There are so many variations on Bamboo Pen, Bamboo Fun, Intuos etc that I have no idea what to look at as a serious upgrade. I just want a reasonable work area and a pressure-sensitive pen function that works with CS2 on Windows 7, but finding out which does this at a reasonable price is hard. Especially, it seems, when you live in the UK. It's not like you can try 'em on and replace them if they don't fit.

(Oh, I would like to have a weekend to play for free with one of those $2000 Cintiq things...)

If anyone has an intuos 3 mouse they never use in perfect working condition and is willing to sell it at a reasonable price I would love to buy it.

The left click on my mouse has been driving me nuts for months, more often than not registering as a double click or even triple when you click once. For a very simple task like click & drag to highlight text, I have to try 5-10 times. According to the all the negative reviews on Amazon with similar experiences, these aren't very durable and way overpriced. I use my mouse all the time and don't want to buy a new one that I know will fall apart in a couple of years if I am lucky and probably much sooner.

I think I still have my Intuous 3 mouse, I'll have to look for it.

the only reason i brought it up is cause you were asking for differences. I thought the older one was a better value because of the mouse (especially for my sister who is on a laptop and doesn't have a true mouse for it)