Mice don’t draw good!

I’d find it very tiresome working with a mouse for prolonged periods, either trying to create or follow existing shapes, both in Photoshop and other graphic applications. I wanted a tablet but had been put off by the price of the size I liked.

Lack of much competition had kept prices high but with more manufactures now joining in, the time seemed right to look again. I ended up putting Aiptek Hyperpen 8000U (USB) top of my 2001 Christmas list.

I wanted a reasonably large working area, ideally A4 minimum A5. This would allow drawing at a reasonable scale while still showing most of your masterpiece on screen. While, in many* drawing applications, the same can be achieved using a smaller working area and by zooming the screen to one part at a time, the more zooming in and out the longer it all takes.
Larger tablet = less zooming around.

* But many applications, especially junior art, allow very limited or no zoom.

The larger the tablet the more things will fit on for tracing, a big advantage with children around. The Hyperpen 8000 has a clear, lift up, top sheet to place paper drawings under for tracing, larger objects such as child’s hands just go on top.

Though I considered Wacom, you’re getting a much less area for your money. The Wacom stylish (battery free) pen and it’s more advanced drivers were tempting but the Hyperpen 8000 working area of nearly 8x6 inch won out.

Christmas arrived and so did the 8000. Plugged up install driver and batteries. Mouse working but pen does nothing! Swap batteries, measure batteries – voltage good. Eventually found that running pen with battery cover off would sometimes get it working for nearly a second!
Trip back to store, everything exchanged, installed and all working.

The driver installation seems quite foolproof. It tells you when to plug in the tablet and to unplug it if you had plugged it up before being told! I tried the v2.0 driver supplied on CD but since have installed v2.24 driver downloaded from Aiptek.

The HyperPen USB control panel is fairly simple with pen and mouse button assignment; adjustment of tip pressure to produce click action, mouse speed; and pen active area control. Just a chosen part of the pen drawing area can be mapped to the full screen, this may be useful if you were using the pen all the time instead of a mouse, otherwise the physical distances you have to move the pen are much greater than those a mouse would normally travel. Having the full pen working area selected is best for drawing, so I always leave this set. It would be great if a tablet function button could toggle between full and small area mapping, the present software would be a pain if switching areas often.

With driver v2.0 clicking tablet buttons F1 – F12 did same as keyboard f1 – f12 key press, this meant that within Photoshop I could assign F2-F12 to PS actions.
With V2.24 you can assign applications shortcuts or URLs to each of the tablet buttons, but it’s a bit daft that where nothing is assigned you now get an error message instead of the fkey action, so I may go back to old version. I’m sure there must be some better way of assigning application dependant functions.

The pen itself is quite plain, the blue top end is just decoration it doesn’t do erase. In operation response is fast and accurate, it seems best to keep the pen fairly upright for consistent tip pressure control but when just tip clicking may be held slanted like a normal pen. Though comfortable to hold the side 2-way rocker switch is a little too high up for easily resting fingers on both ends. Instead try using your thumb, it works and seems less effort with more control.

For drawing and artwork the pen is just great, if your application has stylus pressure dynamics, like Photoshop, or even just pressure sensitivity then the pen becomes a suburb tool that can’t be beaten.

Its mouse is the only thing, which lets the 8000 down. Though cordless, it’s too small to be comfortable, the size being best suited to children, the position cursor jitters and
the control software seems daft.
Why on a large tablet does it use relative mouse movement? mapping an absolute part of the drawing area too the full screen would make lots more sense and re-centring wouldn’t be needed. As it is - if while doing click and drag you go off the active area you have to lift mouse by nearly an inch, so it is outside pickup range, and put mouse back down in a centred position. However going outside range means click has been released – so you lost what you were dragging!! Dumb or what?
Aiptek support suggests that I should return system for the jitter problem. But even without jitter the mouse would still be almost useless and at least I have a working pen at the moment.

I’m now using a dual optical sensor Logitech 4 button mouse, which plugs in to either USB or via an adaptor to PS/2. There is an interference problem, which Aiptek are aware of, between Logitech MouseWare and the Aiptek pen tablet software (Whenever tablet is plugged in the Logitech mouse speed triples). It’s only a problem when using Logitech mouse on USB, on PS/2 it seems fine.

Of the bundled applications I’ve only tried (but not kept) ArtDabbler, this has some nice features but probably not enough to make anyone want to swap from they’re already using. It’s a shame that ArtDabbler is too complex for young children. There’s software to put your signature on word documents and handwriting recognition, might be interesting to see how fast text could be written in.
I would rather have seen some Photoshop compatible pen plug-ins included.

It was easier getting drivers and utilities downloads from Aiptek Int.TW and AIPTEK International GmbH sites than aiptek.com.
A useful diagnostics utility tablettest.exe is available from Aiptek (it produced some of the figures below).

FEATURES:
Aiptek HyperPen 8000U (USB but I believe serial version is available).
Drawing area 7.84 x 5.84 inches, 3920 x 2920 hardware positions, 500d.p.i.
Active area slightly taller as pad has a function button strip area above the drawing area. (Buttons are marked F1 to F12 but tablettest.exe shows that macro key 0 to key 25 positions are detected across this strip).

Pen: 512 pressure levels. 2 way rocker switch, referred to as side buttons 1 and 2, assignable to middle or right click or double clicking.
Report rate = 142 (normal USB mouse rate is 140 Hz)

Power: USB pad takes power via USB, pen and mouse each take a single AAA cell.
Battery drain measured using a digital multimeter:
Mouse: idle 0.04mA; clicking 0.05mA.
Pen: idle 0 .14mA; variable tip pressure 0.13 - 0.15mA; side button 1 pressed 0.20mA; side button 2 pressed 0.24mA.
With typical AAA alkaline cell capacity of 1000mAH this means the pen should run for 7142hours or 297 days before needing a new battery but this will depend on how low a voltage keeps it running.

Two spare, push fit, pen tips are included. Getting a grip on the worn one to pull it out could be fun. Apparently some manufactures won’t sell tips and make you buy a completely new pen, a point worth checking before you buy.

Cost in the UK was £64.73