Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada

OK… I’ll admit it, I’m a bit of a tech geek and do suffer from gadget lust… Over the years anytime I found myself in a computer store that had a Wacom Tablet on display I’d walk over and play with it vowing to one day own one, but never making the jump to actually making the purchase. For those of you who don’t share my passion for all things tech, Wacom tablets are a device that allow you to move the curser around your computer screen with a pen pressed against the surface of the device as opposed to using a mouse. The tablet also comes with a traditional mouse for moments when mousing is a better option than using the stylus.

So I’m over at my friend David Duchemin‘s place the other day and having read on his blog that he’d upgraded his old tablet to a new bigger better stronger faster version I asked what he had done with his old one. Turns out he’s keeping both and using one for home and one for travel, but he was quite happy to lend me his Graphire 3 (the model of his original tablet) and gave me the instructions on what I needed to do to get things working once I had plugged it in to my machine at home…

So I get home… I download the driver for the device I plug it in and it works flawlessly from the get go… I force myself to use the stylus to navigate around the screen and flip between it and the provided mouse to see if I like it and after a couple of days of trying to love it, I just wanted to go back to what I know… The familiar feel of the mouse I’ve used for years.

I’m sure if I actually stuck through the awkward stumbling period while I adapted my work flow to the new device I’d end up getting more accustomed to it and be able to get more out of the device. Especially for graphics applications like work in Photoshop and/or Illustrator, or even video work with things like Final Cut Pro and programs like After Effects and Motion… But for what ever reason I just didn’t want to put myself through that learning curve right at this particular time…

The embarrassing reality is that, although I love working in Photoshop and Illustrator and have a blast putting videos together, I seem to be using my awesomely capable computer as a text editor more than anything else these days… A chunk of my day being spent processing email, writing blog post(s), or surfing the internet either doing research or else just getting sucked in to things like Facebook…

And so, after only a couple of days of only semi-noodling with it I packed it up and it’s waiting for me to take back to Dave. I’m well aware that a tablet is the right tool for the job for many of the things I occasionally do, and that word ‘occasionally’ is the key. If I was a full time graphics professional making my living from the use of the software mentioned above it might make more sense to get through the learning curve, and really wallow in the greatness of what the Tablet is capable of but the reality of my typical computer day doesn’t warrant putting myself through the awkwardness of the learning period or at least not at the moment. Never say never, but realize that you don’t need an elephant gun to swat a mosquito.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under Technical Tuesdays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.