Archive for 'Gadgets'

I Bought a Wacom Intuos3 Pen Tablet!

A friend of mine brought a pen tablet one time in a conference and that was the first time I learned about them. Honestly, I never knew the name of that tool but I knew at that moment I want one. It took me weeks before doing a research on it and a couple more days convincing myself it will be worth the money since I am not going to earn a penny from it. My interest in drawing specially in Photoshop is quite strong because since high school I like to draw things although my mom do not agree that I can (create beautiful pieces). Well atleast I believe I can :P. So then last month after my last training day at Mapua, my boo and I window shopped in Megamall and I really bought a P17,000 worth of an item!

So what made me bought a Wacom tablet? There are only 2 brands that I found while looking around in Megamall, those are Genius and Wacom. I also did a little googling about pen tables and most of the reviews I that others highly recommends are wacom products. My first plan was to buy the Medium Bamboo Fun or 4×6 Intuos 3. The bamboo has a mouse and a pen which is what I just wanted and it is just what I need as a hobbyist designer. The Intuos3 though is the recommended among the wacom family by most users. The only thing disappointing in the Intuos3 is that is does not include the mouse in its package. Blame myself for not reading thouroughly. Anyway, if you are interested about the prices, below are approximate prices for wacom products.

  • P4,000 - Small Bamboo Fun
  • P6,000 - Medium Bamboo Fun
  • P12,000 - 4×6 Intuos3
  • P16,800 - 6×8 Intuos3

The prices are just right based on the their websites but I wanted to keep on looking for more stores. Mostly there are no available products on the store. You have to order it and it will take around 3 days for you to either pick it up at the store or they ship it to your home.

The next day, I attended my last training day in Mapua and my boyfriend had a meeting near the place so we decided to go to Greenhills. Unfortunately, Frank was coming then so we had to cancel it. But I am really itching to get a tablet. I’m excited I think :D Unfortunately, there was no available products on that day for the 4×6 Intuos3 or Medium size Bamboo. Nothing can really stop me from buying one, neither the price nor frank soooo I decided to give in to my childish behavior and be indebted for 6months for this graphic toy that I wanted so badly. I have placed myself to a lot of sleepless nights for doing extra work just so I can pay for my pleasure. I love myself so much! :D

For the record, Intuos is not just a toy. Wacom is the leading company for Pen tablets. Intuos3 is one of their best products. It use USB connection, it has high pressure sensitivity, the pen is cool with an eraser and the reviews are great! Bamboo Fun on the other hand can also be used in designs and is recommended for noobs (like me). Here is a more detailed comparison table for the 2 items. If you have the money, Intuos would be a great investment (they say).

Here are some reviews for more information:

Ok. That’s already a long post, I have to stop now ^__^.

Pidgin over Digsby, why?

I like digsby eversince I installed it in my pc but I rarely use it now after a few days of testing and went back to my pidgin.

Digsby website

Digsby is really cool! It is one of the tools I’ve been wanting. It is a multiprotocol IM client that lets you chat with all your friends on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber with one simple to manage buddy list. It is also an email notification tool that alerts you of new email and lets you perform actions such as ‘Delete’ or ‘Report Spam’ with just one click. And one of the coolest feature this toy has, it is a social networking tool that alerts you of events like new messages and gives you a live Newsfeed of what your friends are up to. I just use twitter on this one though. It has also an alert feature when someone logs in and that is what is missing in pidgin. Yeah it has the buddy pounce but I like it if was more of the ym or digsby type.

Digsby needs users to register first so that they can save all client’s settings, accounts and password in their server. One thing that my friends questioned me when they installed it, is it secure? The digsby team made an effort to answer that. There has also been a lot of discussion from users questioning why this software needs to store their accounts and password in the digsby server but that was already answered in the forum too and I think it will be far from too soon that they will change that.

The above issue is a lesser concern for me though. Compared to the benefit it gives me, i actually did not worry. I do not enter my important accounts in softwares like these. What moved me to use my ol’ pidgin is the total memory it consumes. It’s big and I experienced lag times when I used digsby. My firefox crashes more often than what I was experiencing before. I already feel irritated when firefox crashes and how do you think I felt more when it did more often than the usual? Miserable! I also notice when I am chatting, the time I send my message, it does not automatically reflects in the textarea which sometimes confuses me. I hate that!

I still look forward to this software’s updates. I still want it because it just amazes me! Hope they can fix those issues sooner…

the iPhone mania

iPhone.. iPhone.. iPhone.. I’ve been wanting this gadget the very first time I heard of it’s existence .. not because of its functionality, I just like to play it like in this video…. I’ll probably have my luck and get a cent from it..

Well, if your seriously thinking to buy it or not, check out this man’s blog - 20 reasons to buy an iphone - he is a certified geek btw and he hated it at first (i believe so), now he’s liking it..

What do you think of the iPhone? is it worth the fun?