I've discovered that the Aiptek HyperPen 1200U (available refurbished directly from Aiptek) drawing tablet is supported under Linux. The drivers appear to support nearly the complete feature set. At less than 1/2 the price of what a comparable wacom drawing tablet would cost I can't help but try one of these. I just have to get an okay from the wife (who probably won't care, but I'd feel guilty if I didn't at least ask first).

I'm in dire need of getting both a drawing tablet and a digital camera. I really need to write articles on using both of these in my gimp column for Linux Format. They would also serve me well in discussing how you go from camera to GIMP to print (adding in GIMP's integration with CUPS and GIMP-Print).

It would be way cool if I could get an external, big screen monitor for my acer laptop and run Xinerama (or just a second, larger display, if nothing else). I'd like to be able to do real graphics work again but it's hard to do anything really meaningful on an LCD laptop display. There is too much pixelization or “fuzzyness” to the detail work and besides, staring that hard at an LCD will kill your eyes – especially old ones like mine!