1. What does it look like?
The Wacom "BAMBOO" Pen Tablet is a black panel, about 6 inches long and 8 inches wide, and is nearly featureless save for a stylized "BAMBOO" logo on the bottom and an array of four buttons at the top, centered around a 1-inch-wide circular touch pad. The usable area of the tablet itself is about 4 inches long and 6 inches wide. The tablet comes with a pen-sized stylus and a cradle for the stylus (both also black). The "pen" features a soft, rubbery surface for easy gripping (good for people with sweaty hands).
Overall, it's a very sleek, professional-looking device.
2. What does everything do?
The four buttons on the top of the tablet can be set through the control panel to perform nearly any function, but the preset functions are as follows:
"<" button = "back", ">" = "forward", "FN1" button = "maximize/minimize window", and the "FN2" button performs the same function as hitting "Alt+Tab" on a keyboard (allows the user to switch quickly between currently-running programs).
The circular touch-pad serves multiple functions as well. At the top and bottom of the pad are small grey triangles pointing up and down. Sweeping, curved marks adorn the left and right sides of the pad. Generally, the triangular marks act as "scroll-up/scroll-down" buttons when tapped. Making a circular motion on the outermost edge of the pad allows the user to zoom in or out in an open window. When using a web browser, this generally only affects text-size, leaving images and borders unchanged. In the case of media players, this serves as a volume dial.
Both ends of the stylus can be used as the tip, though one is narrow (about the size of a ball-point tip) and the other is larger and blunt (like an eraser). About an inch from the "tip" is a two-function button that, when pressed on its lower side activates a scrolling feature (holding this button and dragging the pen across the tablet scrolls open windows in all four directions). The upper half of the button is essentially the BAMBOO's equivalent to a mouse's right-click. The tablet tracks the pen at a total distance of 1 centimeter above the surface, so constant contact between them isn't necessary (and not advised, since direct contact with the tablet is equivalent to a "left-click" on a mouse). It should be noted that the tablet responds only to the pen's touch--you can't use your finger or a normal pen or pencil in its place.
3. How well does it work?
Overall, the tablet works wonderfully. The feel of the pen on the tablet's surface feels almost exactly like a pencil on paper, and the adjustable tracking speed is a great convenience. The button on the side of the pen is somewhat awkward, but not unusable.
For newer PCs, (my own is fairly new, running Windows XP Home Edition), the tablet should be ready to use without even installing the drivers from the CD. The disk offers other features, however, such as tutorials on the BAMBOO's use and links to online resources. This instant plug-and-play ability is not always the case with USB devices, so the BAMBOO earns a few extra points for that.
On the down-side, I've noticed an annoying quirk in the responsiveness of the touch-pad. When using it to enlarge or shrink the text on a web page, the pad can alternate between ultra-sensitivity and not working altogether. This lead to my browser getting stuck a few times with the text being either ridiculously large or illegibly tiny.
Final Scores:
Aesthetics: 10/10
Versatility: 9/10
Ease-of-Use: 6.5/10
"Fun-Factor": 7.5/10
