The rumors had been circulating for weeks, but yesterday Wacom officially announced the addition of multitouch features to their Bamboo line of products:
- The Bamboo Touch ($69) provides multitouch functionality in a 5.4″ x 8.2″ tablet
- The Bamboo Pen & Touch ($99) allows both multitouch and pen input, is a slightly larger 9.8″ x 6.9″, and includes an assortment of software.
- The Bamboo Pen ($69) is identical to the Pen & Touch model, but forgoes multitouch in favor of a lower price point.
- The Bamboo Craft ($129) is identical to the Pen & Touch model, but comes in a silver finish and includes a more extensive selection of software.
- The Bamboo Fun ($199) is the largest in the line at 8.8″ x 13.3″, and includes pen & multitouch input, and the same software package as the Bamboo Craft.
All of the tablets in the Bamboo line are powered over USB, and support Windows XP through Windows 7, and Mac OS 10.4.8 or higher (though the press release specifically states that it supports 10.4 and 10.5, so support for Snow Leopard is unclear, though likely).
The complete Bamboo line of tablets are available for purchase now, both through retailers and through the Wacom online store.
Personally, I’m looking forward to finally being able to use MacBook-style gestures on my desktop. Are you interested in multitouch on your desktop or non-multitouch laptop? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
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Oo. I want!
I picked up a Bamboo Touch last week. Here’s my “first look” comments I posted to http://fingerfans.dreamhosters.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2738.
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I picked one up last night from Best Buy for $70. It only has support for 1 or 2 finger multi-touch, but it’s not too bad. It supports:
– 1-finger tap for LMB click.
– 1-finger slide for mouse pointer movement.
– 1-finger slide with left of finger tap for LMB click.
– 1-finger slide with right of finger tap for RMB click.
– 1-finger double-tap to drag.
– 2-finger tap for RMB click.
– 2-finger slide for scrolling.
– 2-finger quick left/right slide for browser-style back/forward.
– 2-finger spread/pinch for zoom.
– 2-finger twist for rotate.
There are 4 hard buttons, assignable to quite a few things (keystrokes, modifiers, builtin functions). They are oriented to the left side of the pad when in a right-handed orientation or on the right side of the pad when in a left-handed orientation.
It’s OSX and Windows compatible. An included driver is needed to support anything in addition to moving the mouse pointer.
It doesn’t come with a Wacom pen, but it sounds like there will be other tablets that will come with a pen. When a pen is brought near the surface of the tablet, it switches to pen mode, and the touch mode is disabled. I’m not sure if this one will support pen input.
As for usability, it’s quite similar to most “regular” trackpads, in my experience. It’s definitely not as advanced or sophisticated as the Touchstreams or the iGesturePads. But for basic features, with a small amount of support for multi-touch, I think I’m happy with what it can do. It’s also hard to complain about it, since it’s relatively inexpensive and will be readily available.
I’m planning on using it at home, instead of a trackball, to get a better feel for it. I’ll comment more as I use it.