Help appreciated: touch-screen drawing

I’m looking for a touch screen device that would work (well) with PowerPoint. I’d like to start drawing my diagrams with a pen, not with a mouse; I have a completely unfounded irrational belief that drawing with a pen might be faster and easier than using a mouse. Any (tested) ideas?

6 comments:

  1. Ivan, have tried pen tablets?

    A nice product is from wagom.com, i have tested once some time ago and was fully satisfied.

    Cheers,
    Mike
  2. I've found the AIPTEC pen tablet to work well. It's not going to give you the ability to actually write on the screen but its inexpensive, doesnt need drivers and responds well. http://www.aiptek.com/ Look for model WCK-C121.

    HTH

    Brandon
  3. Ivan,

    You should look at the Wacom Cintiq. We have used them to mark up PowerPoints when delivering remote classes(or when a whiteboard isn't available). It is basically a VGA monitor that has a wacom tablet overlayed. It connects to your laptop as a second monitor and requies one USB port for the data. It is a pretty nice setup but not too portable, there is a control box that isn't shown in the marketing pictures that is about the size of a 3.5 hd.

    --Ed
  4. Ivan

    I tried a pen tablet for a while, bit it didn't work out for me. I use OmniGraffle on a MAC these days and very happy with that. Much faster at drawing than Visio.
  5. Hi Ivan,

    I also used a pen table to try for drawing, but I could not get use to it. With much effort and time consuming I could draw something that looked like a topology. For me the biggest issue in using it was that I had to keep my eye on the monitor and to draw on the table without looking at it. Awful.
    Maybe with somekind of touch screen quite large screen it will be different. So, I don't advise you to buy a tablet, or not until you try one :)
  6. I'm a little late, but if you can get one inexpensively on the used market or find a model you like to replace your current notebook, a tablet PC is a great tool for educators and students alike. My principal background is in chemistry where drawing various diagram, atomic, molecular or even of lab setup/processes is needed and I don't regret for a second investing in a tablet. My department acutally has a small fleet of them on loan from the University IT department to convince teaching staff that they are a great tool to replace the whiteboard/smartboard because you can draw directly on the slides and capture the lecture as well for re-play.

    In particular, I like the lenovo X61t and the Toshiba Portege tablets.
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