Summary:

  1. At the time of this writing I don’t believe there’s a pen worth buying for the iPad.
  2. Tablet PCs have been around for a while. If you want one that supports a decent pen, try the LS800
  3. Finger drawing is the future.
  4. Hopefully, one bright and beautiful monday morning, 3D artists will drop their mice and use their fingers instead.

You bet I didn’t really intend using my iPad when I got it.

After all, I’ve already got a beautiful S101 EeePC that I hardly use. Just for skyping, note taking and surfing in coffee-shops. And working on the go – you have to believe it: S101 has a full size keyboard.

Hardly before I was 10, my Dad miraculously suggested I learn 10 fingers blind typing. Worked out better than teaching me not to use the lot of them (fingers) to eat cheese and other tiny bites. Ironically, I learned on a Mac+, back in the time the desktop was still a revolution. Ain’t we getting old…

In short, I felt slightly embarrassed, at the outset, finding time consuming information and mass entertainment. In the meantime…

Maybe we don’t really need a pen

After reading a comprehensive review, I ordered a Dagi pen – what’s in ordering a pen that’s as big as my finger (I won’t name products I haven’t tested)? Then I finally got a drawing app, grabbed the mean weeny plastic thingy, had a go at it, altogether relieved my discomfort, first rubbing off, then correcting my work with… …a finger.

That’s when the magic happens. I can type pretty good with 10 fingers, and I really only draw 10 times worse than I type. Not significantly worse with a finger than with a pen.

When’s the 3D killer app?

I love vector graphics. Two finger gestures are perfect for zooming and rotating if anything. I didn’t expect finding anything like ‘just a digital notebook where you can draw, and turn the pages by pressing the screen corners’. Maybe there’s one (Adobe Ideas is too complex and too slow for me. I just tried).

If I can use my fingers to make 3D models and animate them, with whatever added ease this could bring on top of what a blender can do for us, well. I’ll throw a party.

OK… I can make my own drawing ‘pad-app’. I can even make a little utility for quickly modeling stuff. Nice to forget there’s no army of me backing random ideas.

Draw on the go, with a pen

If you’re into drawing on the go using suitable hardware, I might have read that the LS800 supports Wacom pens. Que veut le peuple?