one of the reasons it took so long was that i had promised mini mo that she could do the work to prepare for the baking portion of the first ever product review and she had trouble fittin' me in to her new schedule. overnight, the mini mo i have known and adored up and left and in her place appeared a daughter i am having to familiarize myself with and i've been a little hesitant to use that stern mean mother voice i have perfected over the last 12 and a half years with the new girl. but the body snatcher finally pulled herself away from the mirror and yanked off her ipod long enough to whip up the necessary goods.
i started considerin' the wacom tablet not long after i first started doing daily digital doo dads for delivery via download. i had never used the png format before and i was certainly fooled by what DIDN'T appear on the screen! i had no idea that the were oodles of pixels i was just GIVIN' away - not charging a cent extra for them! who knew that they were there, lurking behind all that see-thru area? i didn't. add to that the fact that i was long overdue for a new prescription for my blue cat eye rhinestone decorated fancy glasses and you've got a recipe for the thing a digital doo dadder dreads most - a COMPLAINT! oh my - before this any complaining about me or something i'd done had been behind my back so this was new for me and was a dire day for this digital designer.
i removed the free pixels from my doo dads but just the thought of it makes me delirious - all those serious scrap bookers saying i sent them second quality stuff. i am certainly thankful they gave me another chance! how horrible it would be to make digital doo dads and there be no one to deliver them to via download! shortly after these dubious day, i got my new glasses prescription (as well as replacement rhinestones for the ones that were knocked out during one of my rougher garage sale escapades) and a big ol' 30 inch digital screen which helped quite a bit. but there had to be a better way to get all those petite pixels to leave my screen!
around this time, there was quite a bit of chit chat among digital doo dad designers about the different wacoms and if newer was better or payin' a hundred dollars for the top of the line was worth the money blah blah blah. it was then that i realized i must be the only livin' human that spends as many hours as i do in front of a screen still pushing around a little mouse and NOT using a wacom.
as you might be able to see in the photo under all the necessary testin' materials, the first ever mo product review pitted three different wacom tablets against each other. they were the oldest one i could find in the computer cemetery but that would still attach via usb and two brand spanking new ones i discovered in mini mo's stash. i call this area 'the many things my father has purchased for me but i have yet to get around to using'. this discovery was a bit upsettin' to me since i have deliberated long and hard over which wacom tablet would be best for designing my digital doo dads and damn it if the dad hadn't already delivered the daughter a duo while i was dithering over which one would do best for doo dads!
which one did i like the best? well, first let me say they all passed with flyin' colors - at least for the things i needed them to do, but the one i'll be keeping around is the wacom intuos 3. as for the oldest one (a intuos 2 i think) and the newest lower range wacom (the just plain wacom) - well, there wasn't much difference between the two of them to speak of. so all of you who have said there was no need to be spending your hard earned money on a newer model until your old one dies - well, you have been right in your thinking. but when it does come time to retire that beloved first one, you just gotta dig up the extra hundred or so the intuos 3 costs because it works a zillion times better than the one you're scooting your pen across presently.
forget all the PR about the added buttons etc. etc. on the intuos 3 - it's just worth the extra money for the way the thing works before i even discovered those. and i don't know about you but i haven't exercised my hand writing muscles much over the last couple of years and when i held that pen my hand got so tired it was slowing down the doo dad production. but there's SOMETHING about the pen from the expensive model that keeps that from happening. i can't see the difference and even had a parade of mini mo's hip huggin' jean attired, ipodded, mirror staring friends inspect it and no one could figure out what makes it FEEL better in your hand but it sure does.
the only thing i don't like about any of wacoms is the more PC like way the mouse has all those clicky areas - they work great and a hard core PCer won't complain - but as a die hard mac-er, i am having a time getting used to extra clickers.
if you are a lefty but use the mouse right-handed, like i do, there is an added bonus and some bad news.i am now a double fisted doo dadder with the pen in one hand and the mouse in the other and have found my doo dad production just humming along. the bad part is those pesky buttons on the left side get in the way and make my work zoom off to infinity - so if you are of the age where you learned to write with your left hand upside down, you might want to tape over those buttons before you get started.
and for those of you who read all the directions from the first word to the last and set up all the fancy bells and whistles right away, you'll be even more delighted with this digital dynamite. for me, if all it had was that good feelin' pen and the tablet, i'd still think it was worth the money to have the better model.
now, those of you who are very neat and organized with lots of rules about how you take care of your equipment stop reading now...go on...nothing else here will benefit you.
okay - for all us others who can pretty much confess to doing a little of everything in front of the computer, let me say you are safe with any of these models. they all can crash to the floor from pretty high up and they'll just keep right on working. they are sturdy enough to use sort of like a tray to carry a number of things away from where you're working - like if your dirty dishes have piled too high in front of the screen to have a place for your keyboard. best of all is they clean up really nice and easy. as you can see from the picture taken in the mo lab during the test, i tried eating just about everything you might crave while sitting in front of your screen to see if the wacom could hold up to what's dropped on 'em. that's where mini mo's incredible bakin' skills really came in handy. her sugar baby, caramel and marshmallow topped brownies are to die for and were perfect for testing out different cleaning techniques on the wacoms. they all wiped off with either a dry or damp cloth like a dream. it was a little harder with the intuos 3 to get melted caramel or pixie stick bits out of of those buttons on the sides. but still, it's worth the extra little bit of work in my opinion. and ya' know, i found they all work almost as well with the caramel still on them.
so that's about it. if you need a little bit more 'mo' type info on these, feel free email me at mojackson@mac.com. i'd be happy to help you out. if you need more technical type info, go to the wacom site for that. and if there's any interest in mini mo's mega cinabuns, sugar baby brownies or her incredible oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, i'll have her blog on up the recipes. they'd all be great wrapped up in one of those collage boxes i assigned as your homework last week!
come back soon - it could end up bein be complete waste of your time - but you'll never know until you come back and check it out.
