I visited my local Apple store this weekend looking for Christmas gifts and ideas. The new Wacom ‘Bamboo’ graphics tablet looked interesting, and I started thinking about ways to justify its purchase. I basically had similar thoughts to those being expressed on the various recent ‘paper’ articles here on 43F. So I’m browsing the Apple section at my local CompUSA later that same day and I notice one of these Bamboo units hooked up to a MacBook. I played with it briefly.

Later at home I began searching the internet and I came to the conclusion that perhaps a digital notepad of some sort would be the best of both worlds. You use regular paper and a special pen that also has regular ink in it. You attach this paper to a clipboard that has the magical parts. Everything you write, no matter where, is recorded. I think this is most useful for lists, charts, logo ideas, brief basic artwork, etc. It seems to qualify for ubiquitous capture, it has the aesthetic and physical/psychological benefit of paper, but it also has the storage benefit of digital.

I think my favorite unit is the one that can also be used live on the computer as an actual graphics tablet (but not in editing an existing picture). As I am not a graphics artist, I’m thinking this might be a helpful thing.

Am I missing something? Do any of you use a similar system?