The Aiptek tablet failed to work easily on my laptop. I've been in touch with the developers and have started to dig into the code myself (it's somewhat interesting to get involved in such projects, though I'm nuts to do it since I already have too many things to get done as it is). I submitted one bug fix and some minor patches. But I just couldn't get it working in time to get this article done.

So I moved to the wacom tablet. I bought a 4×5 Graphire4 from CompUSA for $99. Comparing the two tablets, I find I love the size of the Aiptek but the Wacom stylus is nicer to hold. The Aiptek stylus has a rocker arm for the buttons and I kept pressing that with my thumb. The Wacom has small buttons recessed in the stylus that you don't seem to hit as much. At least on first evaluation.

The problem is that the Wacom tablet works no better than the Aitpek at the moment. Part of the problem is that the kernel I built for my laptop was not installed correctly so I'm sort of hacking my way around it. That's not working. So I grabbed the latest – 2.6.14 – and started to build it again with the mods I know I need (like the psmouse driver forced into a loadable module so it doesn't conflict with the Synaptics pad). I really hate going down this path because I'm afraid I'll fumble around trying to get just the right configuration for the laptop and never get the drawing tablets working.

And I only have 4 more days to finish the article. *sigh* But I'm not giving up yet. I'll let you know how things turn out….