If any of you are into graphics you will know what a Wacom pad is. They are synonymous with graphics tablets in the design or art scene and are practically the only choice you have. At first, after reading all the magazines and online etc. I lusted after a pad, to make my drawing dreams come true.

I did eventually buy their cheaper model called the Volito2, which, although small and without tilt, was really great and perfect for what I wanted to do.

Towards the end of the year I should be moving over to Italy and I am planning on buying a macbook before I go over and concerntrate on art, drawing, modelling (and learning Italian of course). Anyway, (I'm getting to the point soon) I was recently playing around with different operating systems and one of them was mac OS X. Strangely enough, OS X, the home of art, design and all things creative, did not support my Wacom pad.

I popped in my driver CD, hmmm no drivers. I then went to the Wacom web site and checked their download page. They had mac drivers for every model they have released, except the Volito. I then began to read about the dark world of digital tablets.

They never made drivers for the Volito because they say it would cost too much to develop them. Odd, since I would think that all their other models would work in roughly the same way. Then I found out that they actually had beta drivers (not available for download anymore) Of course if you look at the wacom forums here you can see someone calling their bullshit. One of their drivers, actually allowed the tablet to work, albeit you couldn't change any of the settings. However, as soon as Wacom found this out they "updated" the driver so that it wouldn't work any more.

It turns out that if you want to use your tablet for life, or on any platform, Wacom is NOT the right tablet to buy. Everytime they "update" their hardware old models stop being supported, even though it is essentially the same things. Their old Intuos models did literally the exactly the same job as the new ones that have just come out, except that they don't run on OS X and Wacom has no plans to support them. The Intuos range costs about $500 for a tablet (depending on size of course.) and of course the entertainment industry mostly does it's work on OS X so everytime they update their PC's, which they would obviously do, they will need to upgrade their (very expensive) tablets.

They are making people spend ridiculous amounts of money for something quite simple, and then making them upgrade regularly or every few years.

How can they do this? Well they have a questionable patent on wireless drawing devices, it uses some sort of magnetic frequency so their pen's don't require any batteries. This put them years ahead of the competition in terms of accuracy and realism (because the pens are light) but now it appears that they have formed a monopoly on the tablet business.

Of course, most artists and hippie types are too blind to see through their bullshit until they've been screwed so they are getting away with it. I've decided to sell my wacom and get another brand, if only to not support the company anymore, unfortunately, there isn't much competition. I've decided on this, which looks fairly high quality and is supported on both PC and Mac (And Linux).

The problem with this is that it's nearly impossible to buy anywhere, apart from Ebay, in fact, the only store that seems to be selling it is Ebay (well their must be some asian stores probably). Anyone know where I can get this? Either shipped to SA or in Europe. (Cheaply)

In other news I bought baldurs gate (1+2 and expansions), Ice wind dale (1+2 and expansions) and neverwinternights (with expansions) for $35. My life is destroyed for the next year. Oh and things are going very well with my girlfriend who arrived a week ago and is staying with me <3