Wacom’s new graphics tablet

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We’re all more or less used to navigating with touch — the iPhone a recent landslide of multitouch-enabled laptops have pretty much seen to that. (Not to mention the forthcoming Windows 7, which is the first OS to natively support touch.) Falling into line, Wacom today intro’ed new graphics tablets that will let you add touch to any PC or Mac.

The granddaddy of the group, the Bamboo Pen & Touch ($159), overlays two separate input planes. First up, a 6-inch multitouch layer, which will recognise common touch gestures, including two-finger scrolling, pinching zoom and two-finger rotation (a handy tutorial will help you customise gestures to cater to apps or functions you use a tonne). On top of that is Bamboo’s pen-input area, which measures about 7 inches on the diagonal and supports all pen inputs for document annotation, doodling or photo editing (it comes bundled with Adobe Photoshop Elements). The Pen & Touch also has four programmable express keys for any shortcuts you want to have handy.

You can also opt for either the Bamboo Pen or or Bamboo Touch if you only want one type of input and to knock the price down to $99.

All in all, the move isn’t surprising: Wacom has provided pen-input tech for tablet PCs for a while now, and with Win7 looming, the company had to develop a new system to merge both stylus- and finger-based entry.

Wacom has also upgraded their craft-centric tablets to include touch. The Bamboo Fun has a larger tracking area and a whopping software bundle worth a couple hundred bucks that includes Corel Essentials and Adobe Photoshop Elements. The Bamboo Craft, which has has not yet shipped to Australia yet, will be formatted to be the same size as the Bamboo Fun, making it just a little bit bigger.

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