Experience with Bamboo Fun (CTH-640) tablet

During a class room training I don't use much of presentations, but do a lot of free hand drawing and writing on the white board. From experience I found this is a win-win situation for me as well as the trainees. I plan to do the same thing for virtual training also. I could have used mouse for drawing, but I opted to buy a Wacom Bamboo Fun in Hyderabad, India and having really fun with it. Wacom has a wide range of tablets, Bamboo Fun falls in the mid range and is really nice for those who are starting to use tablets.

I primarily use Ubuntu 12.04 as my Desktop OS and had to do a bit of research to make sure that the tablet works with Ubuntu before buying it. The moment I connected it through the USB to the Laptop, I was able to use the tablet with GIMP for drawing without any configuration or any additional software. Later I installed MyPaint and started using it with the tablet. I am not sure, but I think not all the features of the Bamboo Fun are available in Ubuntu because of the driver. Need to check it out.

Bamboo Fun box also has a CD with Adobe Photoshop Elements 10, Corel Painter Essentials 4 and Bamboo Scribe 3.0 for Windows/Mac. Was able to install all these on a Windows 7 Virtual Machine. The tablet also comes with a USB cable, a pen and a couple of nibs for the pen.

The only gripe is that a case was not available from the Wacom dealer. So, I had to design a case, get it done and it turned to be fun and came out very nice as shown in the pictures.

Overall, the Wacom Bamboo Fun is worth the price and would recommend for anyone who are getting started with online presentations and professional drawing. If you have kids at home, they also would really like the tablet like mine did for drawing. But make sure that they handle the tablet with care.

Recently, I have seen Sudheer (whom I had been working with for some time) using iPad with a pen to deliver class room training and it was really effective. The iPad was screened to a projector and the drawings/writings were were also saved for later reference. His use of iPad has streamlined and validated my thought of using the Bamboo Fun.

This is what can be done with the tablet. Have fun !!!