Wacom Bamboo Touch, more launch

Wacom on Thursday morning put out multiple tablets that signal a gradual break away from the company's pen-only approach. The Bamboo Touch, Bamboo Pen & Touch, Bamboo Fun and Bamboo Craft all have a multi-touch surface used for navigation, ranging from basic moves like a basic tap select or mouse-like input to two-finger pinching for zoom and twisting to rotate images. Users don't have to toggle modes when a stylus comes into play, Wacom adds.

Every model also has a much thinner 8.5mm (0.33in) design with four shortcut keys for common tasks.

The $199 Bamboo Fun and $129 Craft lead the range with a silver design that comes in either medium (Fun) or small (Craft) sizes as well as with styluses and copies of Adobe Photoshop Elements, Corel Painter Essentials and Nik Color Efex Pro. The Pen & Touch costs $99 in its small size, comes in black, and drops Painter Essentials from the bundle. Wacom's lowest end models are single-purpose: the Bamboo Touch at $69 has no pen and no software bundle, while the $69 Bamboo Pen is the only model to go without multi-touch, using the pen alone, and gets Painter Essentials in exchange.

All the tablets should be available in early October and will support recent versions of both Mac OS X and Windows, including Snow Leopard and Windows 7.

By Electronista Staff