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Saturday, July 17, 2010

Why the Hell Does Wacom Do This to Me?

I have been a loyal Wacom customer for about a million years. Never has another brand of tablet graced my desk. I love the little cheap tablets, and when Apple decided that USB was the way to go, I replaced my aging ArtZ tablet with a Graphire. I am not one of those people who must have the newest model of whatever equipment they use. I use stuff until it dies or I can't upgrade or get replacement parts any more. I was a happy Graphire user until they started encasing the stylus in rubber shit.

I hate rubber shit. I have a contact allergy to rubber which makes me lumpy and itchy. That the world seems to have embraced the concept of coating everything in rubber shit is a constant thorn in my side. All elastics in clothes have to be covered (try shopping for underwear or bras with no exposed elastic. Not fun.) Shoes are a particular problem, which is why I own two, yep, count'em, two pairs of shoes. I may be the only woman who lives in an industrialized nation who only has two pairs of shoes. I will keep buying those particular shoes until they stop making them. And no, wearing socks does not help. The rubber outgasses or osmosises or something.

So, I was able to get the older Graphire pens, the non-rubber-shit-encased ones, and they were compatible with the new Graphire tablets, and I was happy to be not lumpy or itchy while I was stylusing. My last Graphire tablet died, and I replaced it with a Bamboo tablet. And the stylus is encased with rubber shit, which for a while seemed okay, but then, the itching started. I made the stylus a little sock but this is obviously not working, so I started searching. And Wacom has screwed me yet again.

The only Graphire pen still in production is the bluetooth version, which the Wacom web site is happy to inform me is not compatible with my Bamboo tablet. My Bamboo tablet appears to be some kind of evolutionary dead end, because the stylus for the new Bamboos, which happens to be not covered in rubber shit, is not compatible with it. I am going to have to buy a new tablet to get a stylus that both works and is not covered in rubber shit. I may ritually burn the old tablet. Luckily the little tablets are pretty cheap or I would complain about that, too.

Dear Wacom, just stop covering your styluses in rubber shit. Make a sleeve that people can buy if they absolutely much have a rubber-shit-covered stylus. Sheesh.

2 comments:

  1. hello! I just wanted to tell you that I have a Bamboo tablet too, i've had it for like 2 years now and I have noticed that the rubber cover is a very very thin coat... by today it has almost completely fallen off by itself, and I also noticed that you can scratch it off very easily, so I hope this helps.. just scratch it off :)

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  2. Didn't Bernie Wrightson use clear nail varnish on his brush ferrules, because he developed a contact allergy to nickel?
    I know the situation is different, but one could also use those foam pen grips that allow one to better grip the pen.

    I'm lucky, my drawing tablet pen is made of plastic. No rubber. Only rubber is on the cable that plugs into my laptop.

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