Wacom Graphire3 4x5 USB Tablet (Graphite Gray, CTE430GR) Review

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(More customer reviews)This is my first foray into the world of digital, pressure-sensitive tablets, so perhaps my expectations might have been too high. Ultimately, I thought that I could draw, trace and sketch "naturally" with ease, and that the Graphire would work seamlessly with Adobe Illustrator. Not exactly the case, here are my experiences so far after 3 mos of use:
PRO's:
--relatively easy installation, although mine did not come with very detailed instructions (questions like: do you plug and play first, then load the software? or vice versa?), so I had to wing it.
--the hardware interface is easy and intuitive enough -- just keep your pen within the allocated 4x5 space and you're set.
--comes with some pared down versions of software, so even if you don't have Photoshop or Painter, you can get the feel for how the tablet and software work.
CON's:
--no instructions for setting up with Illustrator (or any other software, except for a couple of tutorials for Painter), couldn't find any info on this on Wacom's website or elsewhere. Couldn't get Illustrator to recognize the pressure sensitivity. Thankfully, around this time I upgraded to CS, and the tablet/pen chose to work with the update. Although Illustrator for some reason only chooses to recognizes about 5-10 "pressures" instead of the 500+ it is supposed to (don't know if this is the fault of Adobe or Wacom) no matter what I choose the thickness/stroke of the line to be.
--forget about physically tracing anything...the plastic piece that you are meant to lift off and slip things under to hold it in place is flimsy and feels like it is breaking everytime you dare to wrangle with it.
--disconcerting size...the drawing area is only 4x5" but the actual tablet is about 8x8" so it leads to this disconnect when mentally mapping the tablet area to the screen area.
--it's very hard to get "unshaky" or straight/precise lines using the tablet. I find that I am actually better at getting things more precise with a mouse sometimes! I think part of the problem is that the "pen's" is too thick/fat.
--you have to hold the pen in a very "up and down" manner for it to work properly which is the opposite of how I naturally draw, which is holding the pencil at an angle.
--the buttons that are on the pen are located in a very inconvenient spot (for me anyway). I will often be gripping the pen and accidently hit the button (which either accesses the right-click menu or deletes the active path, according to my configuration).
--because of the nature of most graphics/illustration programs out there, the 4x5" space is actually cut in half by all the menu clutter...so effectively, you are drawing in a 2x5" space most of the time. You really have to zoom in to draw any kind of detail.
I feel that the tablet is very promising, but has so far failed me in being a "natural" way to draw. It is a fun as a toy, but somewhat difficult to use in a professional way. Perhaps a larger sized tablet would help me with this, but for now, I am still nostalgic for/relying on old-fashioned pencil/brush and paper. I have not used the mouse that comes with the tablet, as I prefer my other mouse.

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All of Wacom's tablets are pressure sensitive-- they literally feel the full range of pressure from the pen on the tablet. With a pressure-sensitive tool, such as Photoshop's Rubber Stamp or History brush or any Painter brush, you get unparalleled control. Press hard, and you get a more opaque clone, a fatter paintbrush, a darker stroke. Press lighter, and you have a transparent clone, a thin brush, a gentle stroke of color. It's intuitive, because it's how tools work in the real world.If you spend any time at all creating and working with images on a computer, a pen tablet will make you faster. You can go from light to dark, thin to thick, or opaque to transparent in one pressure-sensitive stroke. The pen's absolute positioning is also faster than a mouse, allowing you to access every area of your screen without detours.

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