Hard Cider Index

by Ron Gordon

Upon receiving the Creation Station box, I was immediately struck by the personality of the package's graphic design. A bright orange background and lime green border with photo examples of all the fun, neat stuff you could do with the tablet dominated the box, while the picture of the tablet was delegated to a smaller area. Clearly something was different here. A manufacturer usually sets their product center stage on the box, but CalComp seemed to be saying that the product wasn't as important as the ideas it would generate in you. I liked that.

After a quick and easy assembly, facilitated by a clear set of instructions, I rejoiced in having a pen holder. My previous CalComp tablet had none, so my pen was constantly rolling off my desk, falling out of my lap, hiding under some papers... You get the picture. Many times I like to hold the tablet on my leg while leaning back in my chair while designing and I needed somewhere to rest my pen, besides behind my ear, so I was excited about a pen holder. Unfortunately the pen does not snap into place and I was soon on my hands and knees looking for a rolling pen. However, if you use the tablet exclusively on your desk, the pen holder should fulfill your needs.

And what's this? A cordless five button programmable mouse? With such a reasonably priced graphic tablet? OK, I admit I was drooling. But more on that later. The mouse, not the drool...

The Tablet Works CD installation had a few snags. Upon putting the installation CD into my CD drive, I noticed two icons appear on my desktop; one for the a MAC, and one for a PC. Knowing which one was the right one to use came from my experience as a MAC user. I have had this happen with other manufacturer's CDs, so CalComp is not necessarily at fault here. Besides, this may be specific to my system, a UMAX s900 running system 8.1 with tweaked CD drivers, so this may be a mute point. I also had a similar problem dragging the CD icons to the trash for ejection. If I only threw out one icon, the other would remain dimmed on the desktop. Dragging both icons to the trash at the same time solved this problem.

The software installation of Table Works was fairly straight forward. After being greeted by a fun startup intro, the well designed Tablet Works Menu pops up. I jumped into the tutorial which I found to be filled with basic information as well as nice guided activities.

I have to say that two examples were a little annoying here however. You are prompted to sign your name with the pen, but the signature comes out ragged rather than smooth. There is a warning on the frame that the signature will be smooth when using a graphics application, but why not have it smooth in the tutorial? I found myself running to Illustrator to confirm the smoothness. Pessimistic? Maybe, but I like to be sure.

The second example exhibited how easy it was to cut and paste family members from a photo and place them on a new background using the pen to trace the image. In fact I thought it looked a little too easy. Tracing, cutting, and pasting can sometimes be very tedious, but this example made it seem like a 30 second process. Not for a novice it wouldn't be.

But back to the Tablet Works main menu. I liked the fact that you stay within the Tablet Works menu environment even after exiting the customize section, which gives you access to the Tablet Works control panel or exiting the Web section which takes you to the CalComp web page via your internet connection. Staying within the Tablet Works menu keeps your set up concise and easy. The only problem I found was that when I exit my Web browser during regular surfing, I am not automatically logged off from the internet. I need to log off using my Config PPP dialog box. So in my case, Tablet Works left me logged onto the net. No big deal for me, but again, if a novice had their PPP connection configured as mine is, they might find themselves with their phone off the hook.

Besides these two small points, I found the help descriptions to have been wonderfully clear and concise.

Now, onto the good stuff: TOYS.

I found the pen, mouse, and tablet itself to be a pleasure to use.

First the mouse. The ease of a cordless mouse alone makes this Creation Station a great buy. The texture of the plastic sheet on the tablet and felt pads on the bottom of the mouse combine to allow accurate movements of the cursor while providing a smooth interaction with your hand and the mouse. I just love it. Add in 5 thoughtful programmable mouse keys controlled via the Tablet Works control panel and you'll be in love too. I must admit, I realized that I've become something of a MAC one button mouse snob. Till now that is.

The open architecture of this mouse powered by the Tablet Works control panel blew my mind. The mouse has two traditional Left and Right buttons as well as a toggled middle center button with an up and down click, as well as a side power which works as a option button to double the functions of the four top keys. With the added option of having a programmable pop-up menu linked to one of the key functions, the keyboard can become almost obsolete. CalComp threw in scrolling capability using the center toggle key to support the newer web browsers and some other programs. A nice touch. I said it before, I love this mouse.

Now onto the pen. 512 degrees of tip pressure, two programmable pen buttons, pen point clicking capability, and you have a nice tool. It's effectiveness can vary depending on your design software of choice, (Illustrator, Expression, Ray Dream, Strata Studio, Art Dabbler, etc.), but with some tweaking of the pen functions I think you'll be happy. I did have one or two crashes using the included Art Dabbler program after I tried to bring up a pop-up list which I had programmed to the top pen button, but after some dabbling, (pun intended), everything worked fine. All in all, I like the pen and how it feels on the tablet. Very much like the sensation of drawing on paper in fact.

One problem I did have with the pen may again be specific to my UMAX s900. At one point I found the cursor would not track with the pen movement In fact the cursor would jump off randomly to a different part of the screen. I solved the problem by deleting Apple's mouse driver from the system file. Since then, no jumpy cursor.

Beyond this, the pen is very nice, as it was with my old CalComp tablet.

The tablet itself is well thought out, also like my last CalComp tablet. A plastic sheet which you may insert something underneath for tracing is handy. The kids will love it. Who am I kidding? I love it.

An added feature, which my last tablet lacked, is a generous platform which extends around the active tablet matrix. It allows easy mouse movement as well as giving the tablet a meaty feel.

All in all, this is alot of product for a very reasonable price. Oh, and one last thing, I love the mouse.

Ron Gordon is a NYC based computer consultant for both the Macintosh and PC environments. Through his ever-growing weekly private computer lesson service, Ron enjoys empowering new computer users to comfortably and confidently use their machines to their full potential. He also runs a web based antiquarian and out-of-print book business at : Found Books

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