Wacom Bamboo "Great First Tablet"

Graphics Tablet Brand, Model, and Size: 

Approximate Date of Purchase: 

Best Attribute 

It's has very good pressure level settings and an intuitive settings panel, overall: it's awesome for drawing!

Worst Attribute 

It can mess up in both photoshop CS5 and GIMP (all other applications are fine), it only maps to the top left corner and is practically useless... This problem is only on my laptop and it works ~50% of the time there as well. The nibs of the pen wears down quickly for me.

Describe the ease of use for this tablet: 

It was easy for me to learn and use, on my stationary PC (win7) it worked out of the box (with limited capabilities). The drivers where easy to install from the CD, a little bit harder to install with the downloaded drivers. On the school's iMacs it worked great even without drivers.

Describe how you use your tablet: 

Mostly for drawing in photoshop, I'm not used to the hot-keys so I sometimes need to click the icon, but it's easy to hold the pen while using the mouse.

On what operating system(s) is this tablet used? 

Windows 7, Mac 10 or 11 (don't know specifically)

Rate the quality of construction 

Rate the ease of installation 

Rate the documentation 

What did you pay? 

About 50$ (500 SEK)

Rate the value for money 

My Review 

The wearing of the nibs is a real problem, I don't want to pay more for extra nibs every so often (the first went quickly for me). There are differing opinions on this but it seems Wacom is not doing much about it.

It does seem that the Intuos nibs work good, but that's still a purchase that I shouldn't need to do.

Also, the mapping problem in photoshop CS5 and GIMP is also a big problem that really shouldn't happen, I know you can get help with this from Wacom, but it seems you HAVE to call their support for specific instructions, which again, I shouldn't need to.

To get to the good things I feel that this tablet is amazing, it was easy to install and the tutorial was very good (though a little short). I would recommend this as a first tablet (it's my first). Its drawing surface might look small, but I almost feel that it is too big.

Bamboo Pen packs a punch for its low price. It's a great first tablet, just buy some Intuos nibs at the same time.

Would you recommend this to a friend?