Wacom Graphire Bluetooth Tablet Review

Mice may be ubiquitous in the modern computer world, but that doesn't make them the best choice for all activities. Aside from being difficult to use for precise graphics editing, mice can lead to or aggravate repetitive strain injuries (RSIs) - something to avoid at all cost.

Wacom graphics tablets provide a great alternative input device, and even if you don't spend all day editing in Photoshop they're well suited for mousing around as well. Another often overlooked benefit of using a pen based input device is Apple's built in Inkwell handwriting recognition technology. Inkwell allows you to write entire sentences on your tablet and have them translated to text just as if you were typing.

On the down side, clicking small targets is sometimes difficult since the pen is very sensitive and you may end up dragging rather than clicking. Also, the tablet doesn't play well with the previously reviewed Control Scroll Zoom; when zoomed, tablet clicks are offset and don't land where they should. It is unclear whether this is a problem with OS X or with Wacom's drivers. A tablet probably isn't a 100% replacement for a normal mouse or trackpad, but when used in conjunction with traditional devices (or even the included mouse), it works very well.

The Graphire wireless tablet comes with a stylus, stylus holder, two button scroll mouse, and recharging cable. Wacom's technology doesn't require a battery in the stylus, so it's very light weight and easy to use. In addition to being pressure sensitive (with applicable programs like Photoshop), the stylus and the tablet itself both have two programmable buttons on them which can be configured with Wacom's System Preference Pane.

For best results with Inkwell, try using "mouse mode" and turning "mouse acceleration" off. Also, make sure to download and install the newest drivers from Wacom as the ones included on the CD have problems with lag time.

• By Wacom.
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LaCie Portable Hard Drive Review

This LaCie 100GB portable FireWire and USB 2.0 hard drive is designed by Porsche and serves as an ideal backup companion for your lonely PowerBook or MacBook Pro. (It also gets along with iBooks and MacBooks, but the metal styling doesn't match as well.)

Available sizes range from 60 to 160 GB and the drive is bus powered via the FireWire or USB port on your Mac laptop which solves the annoyance of having to plug in a separate power cable. Unlike some other tested drives, this one is able to draw enough power from even the pickiest Apple laptops which often provide no more current than the exact bus specification (which some drive manufacturers don't follow very carefully). In the unlikely case that your laptop doesn't provide enough bus power, this drive can even draw juice from both the FireWire and USB ports simultaneously via an included cable.

The drive is stylish, small, solidly built, fast, quiet, and works flawlessly with Macs. It comes with a soft drawstring case and thoughtfully short FireWire and USB cables. Note that you should use Disk Utility (in your Utilities folder) to reformat the drive as an HFS plus volume (Mac OS Extended) before using it for optimum Mac compatibility. If you need to exchange data with Windows users, leave it with the default format.

• By LaCie.
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