Wacom's New Bamboo Tablet Aimed at Replacing the Mouse?

Unlike other products from the lineup, Wacom's latest pen tablet is rather oriented towards the office environment than towards the professionals who need powerful image editing and retouching features.

That's not to say that you won't be able to edit images in Photoshop or in other applications, but the design and the features are targeting a more broad segment of the market.

For a better understanding of that concept, let's see what Wacom says about its new product: "Today Wacom launches Bamboo, a new consumer pen tablet for freehand writing, annotating and navigating in computer applications. Like its namesake, Bamboo is flexible and can be used for an almost infinite number of uses; from simple things like making notes on documents, to the most sophisticated applications like retouching photos."

Regarding the specs, the Bamboo is A6 Wide in size and has an active area of 92.3 x 147.6 mm (4x6in). The pen features handwriting recognition and time saving gesture control options, which can be useful around the office.

Wacom has fitted the new tablet with a Touch Ring, for a cool zooming and scrolling, and with programmable ExpressKeys, for quick access to the most used functions.

Among the jobs you can pull off by using the Bamboo, there are a few worth mentioning: personalization of emails by signing them off with a digital signature, creation of job notes, rough sketches and marking up documents, spreadsheets, or presentation slides in Microsoft word.

Aside from mentioning that the Bamboo provides 512 pressure levels of sensitivity, and has a programmable double side-switch, and eraser, Wacom's shrewd marketing department has also inserted a clever phrase clearly aimed at heavy office users. They say "Using a pen can also reduce the risk of RSI". In other words, it's best to use the tablet than the old-fashioned mouse. It might be a cool device, but I seriously doubt that many people will crowd their table with a $140 tablet just for some simple document editing tasks.

We are just a few, but there are many of you, Softpedia users, out there. That's why we thought it would be a good idea to create an email address for you to help us a little in finding gadgets we missed. Interesting links are bound to be posted with recognition going mainly to those who submit. The address is .