> i just thought £80 for a tc1100 couldn't be ignored - i mean, i'd enquired about having the broken
> machine repaired and that was going to cost, at least, £80. so, i've saved money, haven't i... right?
lol,
you're sounding like my mum now


> i'm still waiting for the other tablet (motion) to arrive ... maybe the motion one will get sold???

from the looks of the motion one it might be hard to let go of it - keep us updated...

still waiting for the motion le1700 to arrive - starting to get a little concerned over that (not heard from the selller, yet).

the cheap tc1100 has arrived. i can now see why it was so cheap. it looks like someone has built it out of scraps bits of hardware lying around - or they've never once put it inside a padded case. it works but it's pretty useless - the power socket is too temperamental and for some strange reason it doesn't work with the keyboard from the previous (dead) tc1100. also the case is very battered and the screen has a few lengthy scratches.

so, it looks like i'm going to have to dismantle both tc1100s and try and build a "good" machine out of them. i'm not looking forward to it so i think it will be a project i'll just forget about for a few months - or years.

hopefully the motion le1700 will be so amazing i won't even care about the money wasted on the tc1000s.

right. i'm very unsatisfied with with the Motion LE1700.

i said the pen accuracy of the machine was better than my Wacom Cintiq. well, i obviously jinxed myself by saying that - the motion's pen accuracy is rubbish. who designs these pen and screen devices? people that write with super fat marker pens all day so they believe "accurate" is within a 5mm radius?

TOTALLY PATHETIC.

Anyone that uses these pen and built in screen devices needs a reward for putting up with how rubbish they are. this is the 21st Century and my pencil and paper is still about a thousand times better than these cutting edge machines. Rubbish, total rubbish.

i'm that wound-up, i think i'm just going to flog the lot of them.

nudone - I've never used/calibrated a touchscreen device before, but are there not controls for this? I'm assuming there's a control panel applet that will allow you to adjust everything to your liking, just as you can do with your mouse and pointer?

perhaps, i should just add that i'm using Alias Sketchbook for drawing with. this program only shows a very small dot where the cursor is (within the drawing area). that's a dot that looks like a single pixel (and a very faded one against a white background at that).

so, you see, if the pen and cursor are not perfectly aligned you can't draw accurately - it's too late seeing how misaligned the ink is after you've made a stroke.

i'll try using something like Photoshop that displays a brush where the cursor is - but it's still going to be out by a few pixels, so incredibly annoying.

other annoyances about the Motion LE1700: the screen isn't very bright. it's very hot underneath. and it's early days - i'm sure i can find a lot more problems yet.

well, i might have exagerated slightly. the offset between cursor and pen tip is about 2mm (maybe 3mm in places). i don't believe there is a tablet and pen combination that is pin-point accurate as i've now seen four different screens and none have been perfect - so, i guess, i'm just asking for too much. i've read about other people not being happy with wacom cintiqs but they are in the minority.

it's all down to drawing style i suppose. if your style is loose, then there's no need for high accuracy and it will probably never even be noticeable. or, if you stay away from the edges of the screen, then that will help.

one thing now seems clear. i've no reason to keep the LE1700 as it perform worse than the tc1100 - and it certainly isn't worth several hundred pounds more just for a few pixels of extra screen space.

it just seems like i've spent a lot of money (and time) to simply find that a pencil and paper is better than all these electronic miracle devices.

Perhaps to assist end users that hold the tablet at an angle to contend with the parallax created?

(Screen thickness + angle of view create a perceived shift in the true point of contact)

Perhaps to assist end users that hold the tablet at an angle to contend with the parallax created?

(Screen thickness + angle of view create a perceived shift in the true point of contact)

good point, you'd think that would be the case but from my experiments (trying to be clever by offsetting and changing the angle of the pen) the only way the parallax idea might work is, if your eyes were about 3 inches away from the screen, i.e. closer than the top of the pen.

i'm being facetious, of course, but looking around the web it appears that other people have come to the same conclusion. the calibration routine on the device only makes matters worse - even when using a method of using a 16 point grid rather than the 4 corner grid, it's all worse that a simple click of the Reset button.

the calibration system is so wrong it just doesn't provide a consistent "offset" between pen and cursor. a single corner area might be off, or all corners are off in different directions. honestly, it's a total joke.

judging by some of the other comments i've found about the bad calibration it seems that some users are happy to forgive the machine. instead they'll enlarge the scroll bars or gui buttons, or simply say that watching the cursor and not the pen tip is the important part, i.e. they don't care that in some places of the screen, cursor and pen are off by a few millimetres. they obviously need to just hit the Reset button and everything will be fine instead of just lying to themselves that everything is acceptable.

nudone, I'm closely following your tablet saga.  I hear that from a lot of tablet owners: the screen is not bright enough.  i think most of the consumer models suffer from that.  They figure, we'll give you a touchscreen, but at the expense of a good screen.  I've heard the higher, business end models are better, like the newer Motion tablets, the HP 2470p, and the new Panasonic Tougbook CF-C1.  I think my favorite of them so far is the Toughbook.
I'm really hoping these tablets take off in the next year or two.

If you want to cut out eBay I'll send you a list of the electronic detritus that half-fills my basement

I'll bet his list is longer than yours judging by his obsession with eBay!

Maybe we should organise a crap swap system - that way all the unwanted rubbish can circulate the globe until someone finds a use for it.

LOL - probably but a bit will have gone pop and another bit will have dropped off!

And then put them all back in their boxes and pretend I never bought them.