Wondering about a cheap stylus/pad for doodling

[DirtyDog]

I had something similar by Staedtler, one of these, which has a little doodah which clips onto your pad and a special pen, and it uses ultrasound or something to track the pen. It was OK for capturing pages as images but the handwriting recognition, which is why I bought it, wasn't up to much. The Wacom inkling does something similar I believe.

Unless it's moved on significantly in recent years, handwriting recognition is useless. I "trained" the digimemo a number of times, and it still couldn't recognize my writing, unless I printed every word, which sort of defeated the object.

I was mainly using it so that I had a digital copy of my notes from a particularly fraught project - I knew I was likely to get rid of the paper notes, but I still have the digital copies.

The good thing is that it's a normal pen, on normal paper, which makes drawing and writing a lot more reliable than using a tablet.

[doodab]

Not quite what you were after...

I used to use an AceCAD Digimemo, which takes an A4 or A5 pad of paper and you use their special pen to write / draw with. This then gets captured onto the memory of the device or an SD card, and you get exactly what you have written. You can also try handwriting recognition, but I wouldn't bother.

You then get your notes in paper form, so have them handy, but a digital copy of everything as well. The only thing is you have to remember to press a button to turn the "page" on the tablet when you turn onto a new piece of paper.

And if you doodle, as I do in boring meetings, you either have to stop doodling or use a picture editor to remove them from the digital copy (unless you want them preserved).

I had something similar by Staedtler, one of these, which has a little doodah which clips onto your pad and a special pen, and it uses ultrasound or something to track the pen. It was OK for capturing pages as images but the handwriting recognition, which is why I bought it, wasn't up to much. The Wacom inkling does something similar I believe.

[d000hg]

Not sure it would suit my uses but that's a neat idea.

[DirtyDog]

Not quite what you were after...

I used to use an AceCAD Digimemo, which takes an A4 or A5 pad of paper and you use their special pen to write / draw with. This then gets captured onto the memory of the device or an SD card, and you get exactly what you have written. You can also try handwriting recognition, but I wouldn't bother.

You then get your notes in paper form, so have them handy, but a digital copy of everything as well. The only thing is you have to remember to press a button to turn the "page" on the tablet when you turn onto a new piece of paper.

And if you doodle, as I do in boring meetings, you either have to stop doodling or use a picture editor to remove them from the digital copy (unless you want them preserved).

[doodab]

I can't draw well, but I can at least sketch on paper enough to get my point across. Trying to use a mouse, I lose even that. So I just want to remove the hindrance the PC imposes - then as a side benefit I might not reach for a notepad when I need to doodle equations or sketches, which will inevitably get lost, but use the PC and save everything.

Fair enough. The Wacom tablets should do the trick then.

[Scrag Meister]

As soon as I saw "cheap" I didn't reply back then.

As a little food for thought though, I have a Samsung Note 10.1 2014 edition. Nice piece of kit, clear screen, fast, stylus and a good all-rounder, about £400.

They are bringing out a 12 inch tablet and the "Pro" 10.1 too, not sure on release dates or specs at the moment.

[d000hg]

They won't really help if you can't draw to begin with though. Perhaps get some practice in with some cheap pencils and paper first?

I can't draw well, but I can at least sketch on paper enough to get my point across. Trying to use a mouse, I lose even that. So I just want to remove the hindrance the PC imposes - then as a side benefit I might not reach for a notepad when I need to doodle equations or sketches, which will inevitably get lost, but use the PC and save everything.

[doodab]

I've been tinkering with the autodesk sketchpad app on my X230 tablet. That is quite cool.

The Wacom tablets seem to be pretty standard, I had one years ago but I think it got ebayed.

They won't really help if you can't draw to begin with though. Perhaps get some practice in with some cheap pencils and paper first?

[d000hg]

Anyone else want to weigh in?

[squarepeg]

Try some of the lower/middle priced products from the Wacom Intuos range.

[d000hg]

I'm no artist, in fact I totally suck at everything artistic, but in my area of software development I sometimes need to throw together rough placeholder artwork to be used as textures on 3D models, or to describe an idea to a proper artist rather than use words.

Using a mouse makes me even more useless - trying to lasso an area of pixels accurately for instance. So I was wondering if a cheap tablet/stylus might be worth a go. I don't need billions of levels of pressure as I have fists of ham, just a way to precisely control what I'm doing.

Has anyone else tried this, and can advise me? I know nothing about such devices - do they act as a 2nd mouse, how do I know where the pen cursor is when I'm not drawing, etc?

Thanks for any input (excuse the pun).

Looking at the cheap end, this came up on Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trust-Ultra-.../dp/B003MG11AM