Genius MousePen 8 x 6-Inch Graphic Tablet for Home and Office

This is an excellent little device. First off, some corrections and suggestions:The device I got came with 42 hot cells. 13, however were unmarked. They are there, however. Just use the other cells to gauge where they should be (there are 13 top cells as well, so they're in the same positions.)[Edit] As you will see in the following paragraphs, I was very excited about the hot cells, because I thought I could replace the many functions I use my keyboard for with those cells. Unfortunately, you have to look away from the screen to see them (which is impossible in the dark unless you put some sort of glow sticker on them). Therefore, keeping my keyboard on my left side has been much more efficient, because I can navigate by touch without taking my eyes off the screen. Note also, however, that I was already very practiced at using only my left hand to execute commands when I used a mouse. It's much faster, also, to simply choose tools from the toolbar (or use the already programmed keyboard shortcuts) than using a hot cell, and to make easy keyboard shortcuts for actions. [End Edit]The pen doesn't have an eraser, but, at least in Photoshop, a hardware eraser would be pointless. Make an action mapped to a function key that changes your tool to eraser, map it to your tablet hot cell, and you're good to go (It's FASTER than flipping the pencil around.)Don't know how? Here's a quick run-through (this is on PS7... other versions shouldn't be a lot different): Window->Action (Check it, if it's already checked uncheck and check it so you can see the action pallete)Click the action pallete, you can probably delete anything that's already there, but you don't need to. Click the create new button at the bottom of the pallete (notepad icon), name it and set it to whatever button combination you want (I think it has all th e function keys +shift+ctrl, so that's plenty of combinations) Hit the record button on the bottom of the pallete, then click the eraser tool. You'll see "Select Eraser" appear in the action pallete. Press Stop.Now in the system tray, click the icon that has a pen drawing on a tablet. Go to hot cells. Click whichever cell you want to make the eraser, name it Eraser, then click define. A menu will pop up, Select Hotkeys: check the ctrl or shift buttons if you used them in your combination, and then choose the correct function button. Then click OK/Apply and your done. Now any time you tap in that cell you select the eraser.With actions, you can also change the brush type, size, opacity, and what pen pressure does, if you want. They're very powerful for streamlining your projects, especially if you end up doing a lot of the same things to every image. With hot cells, it's even faster (though I wish they would ship with blank labels, but I'll get some.)Next, points about pen pressure not working/etc. All the solutions have already been offered. Download the updated driver (I am using this on Vista 64 with no problems. A new driver was issued Jan 15 specifically for Vista 64.) It apparently addressed CS4 issues as as well, but I don't have that to comment. Run the set-up from the zip file on their site, and you'll be good to go (it may take a couple of minutes.. my computer's fairly fast and it still took awhile. During that time it said it was "not responding" but it was actually installing the driver. Don't trust Windows... Reboot. Anyway, next, change the battery. I use rechargeable batteries in all of my wireless stuff, anyway, so it wasn't a big deal. The pen was working before I did this in mine, as well. Finally, check your photoshop brush pallete and make sure you've got it set right. Opacity is in other options, Size is in Shape Manipulation. Those are the only two I foresee using "Pen Pressure" to control. Now, if you're using size, your MAX pressure equals the brush size you select. It won't go bigger than that. So pick the biggest you want it to get, and learn the pressure to get it as small as you want. It takes some getting used to. With opacity it's the same thing, use the highest opacity you want to get to on a single stroke.Another con, the New and Open Hot Cells (which are labeled on the tablet) were reversed on mine. it took all of two seconds to fix, though. (switch the ctrl+o and ctrl+n definitons to the other).Alright, enough of that. The tablet is great. 8x6 is plenty of room, and the texture is nice. Whoever said it was sandpaper is nuts, or they've upgraded the hardware. feels very close to drawing in my sketchbook. I really like it. The pressure sensitivity works well, though I would have preferred some way to have the very lightest pressure be just making contact with the tablet (and not pressing down at all). This is how I do light shading with pencil, and it's a lot more comfortable for me. Adjustments have to be made for the convenience of digital medium, though.Oh, uh... I haven't even taken the mouse out of the bag. I already have a wireless keyboard with touchpad that works great, and then pen works well as a mouse, too.This IS set in absolute mode. I haven't found anyway to make the cursor position the center of the tablet, which really would have been nice (mark the center point with a line and position it with a mouse when you need to be exact.) Hovering works... but basically you just have to memorize how things on screen relate to the pad. I'm sure it will become second nature eventually, but it's a pain right now. The transition is difficult enough from not using hand-eye coordination to draw.[Edit] I now much prefer having it in absolute mode, where the center of the tablet is always the center of the screen. With some practice, I'm now able to reasonably predict the area where I'm going to draw without even looking at the pad. Beware turning the pad at a different angle to your screen :-)[End Edit]Let's see... I think that's it for now. I'll try it in ubuntu 8.10 eventually, and update. From the reviews it seems GIMP works well with it, so that should be interesting.[Edit] Works great on Ubuntu, although it's not fully functional. I couldn't get the pressure working, though I didn't try long. I got along without pressure for a long time :-). I'm very happy with this purchase, and would likely pay twice what I did for it again, which says quite a lot. [End Edit]

I'll be straight with you -- I've only used professional Wacom tablets. I'm spoiled. I'm an artist by trade, and found after upgrading my computer system that my 12 year old Wacom tablet had no driver support for Windows 7. Purchasing the Genius MousePen 8x6 tablet was an experiment to see if a cheaper make and model would suffice.Pros:The largest surface area for a graphics tablet for the money that I could find. Includes pen, mouse, and tablet. Does have pressure sensitivity, tracked accurately enough to do handwriting or casual drawing.Cons:You get what you pay for. It doesn't claim to be a professional tablet. It's described as a "home and office graphic tablet" because it's meant for the causal user. That said, after using Wacom Tablets for so many years, this tablet felt exceedingly cheap and flimsy to me. Software wasn't very good, and drivers seemed less bulletproof than I would expect.Tablet:This will sound like a stupid criticism if you aren't someone who spends a lot of hours using a tablet doing artwork -- but the tablet surface, touching the pen to it, felt scratchy, cheap, and distracting. If you're doing hours of work drawing and sketching on the computer, it's less than ideal. Again, for $40 bucks, maybe if I were a high school kid or casual digital painter, I could get used to it.Pen:The pen uses a AA battery. Pull it apart into two pieces, and the battery goes on this thin, flimsy strip of metal that touches each end. The construction looked like the inside of a $2 kid's flashlight. Wacom pens, by comparison, use no batteries, relying on magnetic induction or... unicorn spit, or some such thing -- I don't exactly know. I've just never heard of one breaking, ever.A handy tip -- be very careful when installing the battery into the Genius pen, and align the two halves precisely. I didn't, and it got seriously jammed in the wrong position. I nearly broke the thing trying to pry it apart again. And never, EVER, twist the two pieces while together for ANY reason.Also, since the Genius pen (and many other brands of non-Wacom pens) uses a battery, it made the pen feel a bit fat and clunky in my hand -- and I'm a big dude. Maybe you won't care or notice. For $40 bucks, I could get used to it. But if I were some petite little artist using this thing for a substantial amount of time, I imagine it might feel a little like I was handling some goofy circus clown pen. Again, it's semi-subjective, so you might feel differently.Lastly, there was more springiness in the pen's point than I'm used to, allowing for a fair amount of compression, which made its handling feel awkward for drawing. Again, maybe I could've gotten used to it.Mouse:Again, less substantial than Wacom mice. Worked okay. It had this middle mouse rocking switch instead of a rolling wheel, which I didn't care for.Manuals and Software:Software for a tablet is important because you frequently use different settings in different programs. The Genius tablet's manuals and software are weird and clunky, lack many customization features I'm accustomed to, and using it you immediately are aware that the software was made on the cheap. It has frequent goofy English mis-translations, typos, and grammatical errors that just don't say "quality product".Compatibility and Performance:Its pressure sensitivity seemed to work or not work depending on what program I was working in. I was using it in high-end graphics software, sure, but at least the drivers should have been relatively bulletproof, right? The final straw that got this product boxed back up and returned to the seller was that ultimately I simply could not get pressure sensitivity to work with ZBrush, my primary work program.To Sum Up:For the money, the Genius MousePen 8x6 Graphic Tablet offers as large a work surface as I could find. The pressure sensitivity and tracking weren't bad, but were not what you'd want for a serious hobbyist or professional artist. Its construction is flimsy, and the drivers and software are cheap and far less than I'd be willing to put up with. But you get what you pay for.This tablet would be a great, affordable birthday party gift for someone else's 10 year old kid who likes doing art with MS Paint or something. For my own kid, I'd be inclined to spend more money and get a used Wacom Intuos or other professional quality Wacom graphics tablet. (I've not used their cheaper "Bamboo" line of tablets, so I can't speak to their quality.)This tablet would also be fine for an adult who just wants to doodle, use hand writing in programs such as OneNote, or prefers a pen to a mouse.For a professional artist, serious art hobbyist, or art student, if I literally had nothing more than $40 bucks or so to spend, and I needed a graphics tablet, I would borrow some cash from someone and buy a used Wacom before getting this thing. A 10 year old Wacom is easily superior to this tablet for doing real art -- in its durability, tracking, ergonomics, and most especially drivers and software.