By Evan Ackerman

Cloud Engines has unveiled a new version of their Pogoplug hard drive mobile access networker sharing thingy. Um, let me take another stab at that: Pogoplug (which we first saw last year at CES) is a little tiny computer that talks to USB hard drives and makes their content accessible from anywhere, and easily sharable with anyone. It doesn’t do anything that you couldn’t do with all kinds of major networking headaches, but that’s exactly why it’s so useful: you just plug it in, it works, and you’re done.

Version 2 of the Pogoplug features a redesign that incorporates a few more USB ports, making it easier to add multiple drives, although you can also use a USB hub to do the same thing. It comes on a weird pink sled, which personally I’m not a big fan of… I kinda liked the unapologetic functionality and smaller form factor of the original. There are also a host of new features on the software side, the most notable of which are automatic media syncing and global search, but you’ll also find new tools for creating and sharing media slide shows and other social features like a sharing address book.

The Pogoplug 2 is currently on pre-order for $129 (looks like the original version is still an even $100), which includes a lifetime of web sharing service.

[ Pogoplug ]

There’s no indication it will be made available in North America, but as November 16, Japanese manga artists have been able to buy a special version of Wacom’s Bamboo Pen & Touch tablet (reviewed here) called the ‘Comic Pen & Touch’ that includes comic book specific software such as “the pixia painting program, the CG illust 4.5 paint program demo from manga supply maker Deleter, the Comic Studio Mini manga layout program, and the Comicworks manga creation program demo for new artists.” And given a lot of the software appears to be demo or starter versions, I can’t imagine the Bamboo Comic will cost any more than the standard Bamboo Pen & Touch version.

[ Wacom Japan - Bamboo Comic Pen & Touch ] VIA [ Anime News Network ]

If you do any kind of computer graphics, animation or design work on a daily basis there’s a good chance you already use a Wacom tablet. But while that Intuos or Cintiq (you lucky bastard) might be ideal for your workstation, their size makes them not so ideal when you’re on the go, working on a laptop, or anywhere with limited space. And it’s those times when Wacom’s more affordable Bamboo line really shines.

Not only does their compact size make them easy to stash in a laptop bag, but they provide similar functionality to their larger counterparts for a lot less money. And they’re the first Wacom tablets that can also be used with your fingers, including multi-touch gestures on a Mac or a PC. As someone who’s used a Wacom tablet pretty much every day for the past 7+ years I was curious how the company’s new Bamboo line stacked up against their more professional models. And if you’re curious too, you can find my full review after the jump.

Like I’ve already mentioned, the biggest reason I’d recommend Wacom’s Bamboo line to a digital artist is their relatively compact size which makes them easy to travel with and use when you don’t have a large desk at your disposal. But I do have to caution anyone who’s already used to a larger tablet, the smaller footprint of the Bamboo Pen & Touch does take some getting used to. It has an active pen area of 5.8 x 3.6 inches and I often found myself wandering off the edge of the tablet with the stylus. Now for the most part I’ll chalk it up to muscle memory from using a larger tablet for so long, but it’s something you’ll want to keep in mind if you’re thinking of picking up one of the Bamboos for design work on-the-go. But if you’re just starting out with a tablet, I don’t think the size will be an issue.

Another limitation of the Bamboos, and previous lower-end Wacom tablets, is the reduced sensitivity of the stylus. The tablet can actually tell how hard you’re pressing with the stylus, and the Bamboo can detect about half as many distinct pressure levels as the company’s higher-end models. But again, I think it’s only an issue if you intend to do a lot of painting work in Photoshop or Illustrator, and even with the reduced sensitivity, the Bamboo Pen & Touch is still a far superior alternative to a mouse for that kind of work.

Like all of Wacom’s tablets, the Pen & Touch is very stylish and extremely well built, and should survive extensive use (and even travel) on a daily basis. In fact I can’t remember ever having a hardware issue with any Wacom tablet over the years, so if you’ve been discouraged by their pricing, even with the relatively cheap Bamboo line, I can assure you they’re worth every cent.

Here’s a shot of the underside of the tablet, and while there’s not much going on here, you will find a set of four rubber feet that will prevent it from sliding all over your desk. Not a very exciting shot I’ll admit, but I like to be thorough.

Since the higher-end Wacom tablets aren’t really designed for traveling, the only stylus storage they usually include is a small stand that gives you a place to stick the stylus preventing it from rolling all over your desk, or getting misplaced when it’s not in use. But like I’ve already said, the compact size of the Bamboo tablets means a lot of artists will be buying them for portability, so instead of a stand, Wacom included this stylish red fabric loop which not only provides an extra place for corporate branding…

…but also serves as a very convenient place to store the stylus. You probably won’t be using it every time you set the stylus down for a few minutes, but when stashed in your laptop bag it will ensure the stylus and tablet don’t get separated. It’s a simple yet clever solution that works quite well.

On the other side of the tablet you’ll find a set of four buttons or ‘ExpressKeys’ which can be programmed with specific functions or custom software shortcuts in the Wacom driver settings. The buttons can be used to reproduce additional mouse button clicks, launch specific applications or even quickly toggle the tablet’s touch functionality, which is almost a necessity. (More on that later.)

And while the ExpressKeys happen to appear on the left side of the Bamboo in the previous photo, the tablet’s actually designed so that it can be flipped around and used the opposite way if you find it more comfortable. (I don’t really think it’s a right-handed vs. left-handed thing.)

Up until now, the whole point of buying a tablet was so you could use a stylus for interacting with a PC instead of a somewhat clumsy mouse. And in my opinion, it’s the design of their stylus that’s made Wacom the defacto standard when it comes to tablets today. (Go ahead, name another tablet manufacturer, and Koala Technologies doesn’t count.) It’s completely wireless, but doesn’t need batteries, making it as light and as easy to use as a regular pen. And while the stylus included with the Bamboo line might be lacking the sleek ergonomical curves of the styluses included with Wacom’s more expensive tablets, it works just fine. It’s kind of like comparing a Bic pen to a fancy Montblanc, they both get the job done, but the latter provides a more pleasant experience.

However, I have to say I’m kind of disappointed with the design of the ‘eraser’ on the Bamboo’s stylus. It’s no where near as rounded as the eraser button on the stylus I regularly use, and the flat design results in somewhat of a sharp edge, even though it looks rounded. In fact it actually ended up leaving scuff marks on the tablet surface when I used it. Now perhaps I was being a bit too zealous with my erasing, but I used it no differently than I would my regular stylus. So I’m not sure if it’s the design of the button, or a result of the type of plastic being used, but I can’t say I’m completely happy with it.

But like I mentioned earlier, if you don’t like using the stylus that’s no longer a problem since the Bamboo Pen & Touch is one of Wacom’s first tablets that can be used with your fingers instead. You can basically think of it as a considerably larger version of the touchpad featured on Apple MacBooks these days, though I have to admit it’s not quite as accurate or responsive.

Now don’t get me wrong, the ‘Touch’ aspect of the Pen & Touch works just fine, but there’s something about using it that just doesn’t feel as slick or as immediately responsive as Apple’s touchpad hardware. Even with the handy multi-touch gestures that worked just as well under Windows XP as they did under Snow Leopard (if you happen to forget the motions there are handy little animations in the driver settings to remind you) I can’t see myself using the Bamboo Pen & Touch with my fingers that often.

Thankfully, like I mentioned earlier, you can set one of the ExpressKeys to easily toggle the touch functionality on and off. You don’t really notice how often your hand brushes against the tablet surface on Wacom’s older models when using the stylus, but since the Bamboos can detect those touches in addition to the stylus, you end up accidentally doing things you didn’t mean to. So disabling the touch functionality is pretty much the only way you can effectively use the stylus I found.

Conclusions:

If you’re looking for an affordable alternative to Wacom’s Intuos tablet line, or just want a tablet with a smaller footprint than your laptop, the company’s Bamboo line is absolutely the way to go. With a price tag of just $99 the Pen & Touch is priced comparable to higher-end mice, but in my opinion it provides far more functionality, particularly if you’re a digital artist. Unfortunately at the moment the touch functionality comes across more as a novelty than something I’d use on a regular basis, but I think it’s just a solid driver update away from being as usable, or even a better alternative, to the touchpads found on a MacBook.

Pros:
+ Compact, though still large enough to be productive.
+ Convenient fabric loop for storing the stylus.
+ Relatively inexpensive.
+ Superior alternative to a mouse for digital artists.

Cons:
- Compact size could throw off artists who are used to a larger tablet.
- The design of the eraser on the stylus tended to scuff the surface of the tablet.
- Touch functionality could be a little more responsive and accurate, and it can be problematic when using the stylus. (Though it can be easily turned on or off.)

Links:

Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch Tablet – $99

If you have any questions about the Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch Tablet you’d like answered, please feel free to leave them in the comments, and I’ll try to respond to them as best I can.

This morning Elecom released a whole slew of new card readers, and while most of them just seem to feature a new color or slightly more compact design, this particular model, the MR-C20, stands out thanks to its magnetic backing that lets you stick it to a filing cabinet or PC tower instead of having it cluttering up your desk. It’s also available in trendy colors like black, white, fluorescent green and hot pink, but like most readers these days it eschews support for compact flash in order to stay compact.

[ PR - Elecom's New Card Readers ] VIA [ Akihabara News ]

The company that introduced the world to the netbook with their EEE is now introducing a system at the other end of the performance spectrum.

The Asus ESC 1000 is essentially a desktop supercomputer with a speed of 1.1 teraflops thanks to a 3.3 GHz Intel LGA1366 Xeon W3580 server processor, 960 cores inside three Nvidia Tesla c1060 graphics processing cards coupled with a Quadro FX5800 GPU. The system also includes 24GB of DDR3 1333 MHz RAM, a 500GB SATA II hard drive and a high-capacity 1100 watt power supply. All for just over $14,500 according to PC Advisor.

[ Softpedia - ASUS Launches Its First Supercomputer, Packed with NVIDIA Graphics ]

It might not be as comprehensive, nor is it narrated by Stephen Fry, but Openmoko’s WikiReader could be the closest thing we have to The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy right now. It’s a palm-sized encyclopedia that contains over 3 million English language articles from Wikipedia, available offline.

Thanks to its monochrome touchscreen display that allows you to click on hyperlinks and scroll an article with a finger stroke, the WikiReader will run for months on a set of 2xAAA batteries. And since Wikipedia is constantly being updated, the WikiReader can also be kept up-to-date with quarterly updates that can be downloaded for free from their website, or there’s a $29 yearly subscription plan which provides the updates via microSD cards. $99 available from Amazon today.

[ WikiReader ]

Given how easy it is to open your standard beige PC tower case (assuming it’s not locked) I’m pretty sure you don’t want to use this locking drawer that installs into a couple of unused drive bays to protect anything particularly valuable or important.

But if you’re tired of people mooching your blank DVDs, or stealing paperclips, I guess it could serve as a convenient lockbox. Each drawer comes with a couple of horizontal and vertical dividers for compartmentizing it as needed, as well as a CD post that should hold about 24 discs. Just $9.95 from Kleargear.com.

[ PC Drawer and Locking Safe ] VIA [ The Red Ferret Journal ]

The surprise was kind of spoiled last week when someone actually managed to buy one, but today Wacom officially unveiled their new multi-touch friendly Bamboo tablets. They essentially work like a larger version of the MacBook’s already large touchpad, allowing you to use your fingers for multi-touch gestures, as well as the traditional Wacom stylus for drawing and other more precise work.

And while it seems a bit confusing, there are actually now five different products in Wacom’s Bamboo line which each contain different levels of multi-touch vs. stylus functionality at varying price points. At the low-end there’s the Bamboo Touch and the Bamboo Pen which only support multi-touch or the stylus for $69, and on the high-end there’s the Bamboo Fun for $199 which supports all of the aforementioned features and appears to be slightly larger, and only available in silver/grey.

[ Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch ] VIA [ SlashGear ]

While SGI will probably never be remembered for their business prowess, there’s no denying they had some nice hardware back in the day. But it looks like the company is back at it with their new Octane III Personal Supercomputer announced yesterday. With a one-by-two-foot form factor and a wall of fans you probably don’t want this thing sitting on your desk, but if you need the computing horsepower you won’t be disappointed to hear that the Octane III can accommodate up to 80-high performance cores and almost 1TB of memory. The system will be available in a wide variety of CPU configurations, and here’s just a few to give you an idea of what kind of processing power we’re talking about:

- Ten dual-socket, Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series-based nodes
- One dual-socket, Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series-based workstation with advanced NVIDIA graphics and/or GP-GPU card support
- Nineteen single-socket, Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 3400 series-based nodes
- Nineteen single-socket, Dual-Core Intel® Atom™ processor-based nodes

The Octane III is available now with Intel Xeon processor 5500 series or Intel Atom configurations and a starting price of $7,995.

[ SGI Octane III Personal Supercomputer ] VIA [ Ubergizmo ]

I absolutely love Logitech’s VX Nano cordless laser mouse for day-to-day work and travel, and recommend it to anyone who asks, but it is a bit on the expensive side and whose to say everyone will find it as comfortable to use as I do. So I also dig this cheaper alternative from Verbatim. The Easy Riser’s most obvious feature is the adjustable height which can be raised for a more comfortable hand posture, or flattened for easy transport. But it also comes with a classy silver and black finish and a programmable scroll wheel.

Best of all it comes in 3 different cost-effective flavors for any budget. A 2.4GHz wireless model with a tiny USB receiver (as tiny as the VX Nano’s) for $39.99, a wireless Bluetooth model for $34.99 and a retractable corded version for just $19.99. Available from Verbatim sometime in October.

[ Verbatim Easy Risers ]