The not so genius G-Pen M609

Recently I got a Genius G-Pen M609 graphics tablet. After having wanted one for years, I was soooo excited! I was convinced, that this is the only thing that was stopping me from creating graphic masterpieces. Oh, how I was disappointed

First, I tried the tablet on a Windows 7 laptop and after installing the free software that comes with the tablet (Free Writer and Office Notes), I couldn’t run them and kept getting driver related error messages. But since I had GIMP installed, I tried that. The drawing was very skitty and often, after moving the pen away from the keyboard, the tablet woudln’t recognise it again when i tried to start drawing, at which point, I’d have to press one of the shortcut keys to make it responsive again and carry on from there. And also when it was responsive, it wasn’t consistent and the lines ended up broken on the screen. I put this down to my inexperience with the tablet and ventured on.

Next, I tried it on a Vista laptop. This time there were no problems with the software or the drivers and everything seemed to be in order. I straight away from the included software and it was OK. Writing was nice (even if it was still broken) and annotating was fairly simple too. So far so good. Then I opened up Flash and unfortunately it was all downhill from there. I don’t know if it really is my lack of experience with the tablet of it is something with the tablet but drawing was a nightmare. I found some tablet drawing tutorials online and even following them was impossible. Every time I put the pen down on the tablet, it would only respond to half of my strokes and even the ones that appeared on the screen, were awful and too sketchy. I scoured the Inernet looking for reasons but haven’t found any. Generally the tablet seems to have good reviews and I am starting to think that mine is faulty.

Even if this is the case, there are a few other things that I find disappointing about the tablet. The pen is absolutley HUGE. It’s very difficult to control it sometimes and it doesn’t feel natural in the least bit. The MacroKey Manager software that comes with the tablet is pretty bad. It doesn’t seem to let you assign macros to all the keys and also there isn’t much help in figuring out the codes for the shortcuts (cut, copy, paste, etc..). Also, there is no space allowed for labeling the macro keys which means having to remember all 26 of them by heart for each program that you decide to use them in Another feature that I would have loved to have had is a plastic film which can be lifted and used to hold drawings in place for tracing. This seems to be a part of most other tablets and am disappointed that Genius decided to leave it out on this one. I’ll have to resort to masking tape for now, I guess. And finally, the turn wheels at the top do not have the same functionality in all programs which is very frustrating. I realise this could be more of an issue with the software but it is not helpful in the least bit when you have to memorise the different movements for different programs.

Having said all of this, it is my first tablet and I really don’t know how much of it will work itself out over time. I’m just very disappointed at the moment. I persevere though and will give you and update if things improve..