Wacom Driver Update

[Svengali]

Recently released, updates for most or all U.S. wacoms...

http://www.wacom.com/downloads/drivers.php

[Paul Fierlinger]

Wacom hasn't surprised me again -- the latest driver doesn't work with the recently issued Classical Pen. Why should it work? after all it's just Wacom software...

[ematecki]

Yes, I think they have the same problem as Canon.
Great hardware, but crappy software to go with...

[Paul Fierlinger]

At the beginning of the Mirage days I was in phone touch with the CEO of Wacom. I tried to talk with him about their inadequate software and he dismissed is with. "Eh... software! There is no software that works well; you know that" and he went back to extolling the virtues of their latest tablet model. It was obvious that they have no interest in spending any time with their software issues.

[Svengali]

Previous drivers did work with The classical pen and the new driver doesn't? Or it never did. What is the nature of the malfunction? Is the pen meant only for the Intuos 4?

Sven

[ematecki]

At TVPaint we are waiting since the first Intel Mac came out for a working driver for our Canon copier/printer ...
That's what, around four year ?

It isn't even that the current driver just doesn't work, but you can't uninstall it (!), and when you hit by mistake Cmd-P, the application crashes !
And Cmd-P is damn close to the very useful Cmd-[ in the development environment !

I can't remember how many times I cursed Canon for that :)

[Paul Fierlinger]

Previous drivers did work with The classical pen and the new driver doesn't? Or it never did. What is the nature of the malfunction? Is the pen meant only for the Intuos 4?

Sven

I answered this question at length and it's gone... anyway, it's a new old pen reissued for the Wacom 4. In software version 614 the mapping tab comes up blank for the new old classical pen but the tab fills out for the grip pen. In version 613 the mapping tab shows up ready to be configured but it lies; it doesn't work for the classical pen. I am finally back to 612, which sees and works with the new pen but I have to reconfigure all the settings again, even though Wacom claims that their software can now remember original settings.

[Svengali]

That's ugly.

For several years ZBrush had a bug that crashed to the desktop almost every time someone would press shortcut key Control-S (the save model hotkey!). Lots of angry users from that one.

Sven

[Paul Fierlinger]

I am still not done with the damn reinstallation. Now it's doing to me what it often does, which is after configuring all the settings for two softwares (vegas and TVP) everything works, except the software won't show up -- it appears in the task bar, but the interface remains hidden so that I can't make changes to the settings. This is a big, rich company and after all these years of selling way overpriced hardware they don't have the decency to spend some money on their software? How hard can it be to find someone to make a program that will remember its configured settings?

[Paul Fierlinger]

OKAY, I called Customer Help and the nice young man (American) helped me work through it. There's a bug )known to him) in driver 612 which holds on to preferences and won't allow 614 to start fresh. He had me uninstall Wacom and reinstall the lates driver 614-3 WITH MY CLASSIC PEN. Not the grip pen and not with a mouse and that's the magic handshake; that forced 614 to open fresh. It feels like spring outside...

[Paul Fierlinger]

One more happy post: Wacom now indeed does have a way to remember your settings with the latest driver. Go to Start>All Programs>Wacom Tablet>Wacom Tablet Preference File Utility. That's the one with which we can now save our preferences and from which we can load these back into Wacom whenever the need arises. Finally!!

[malcooning]

One more happy post: Wacom now indeed does have a way to remember your settings with the latest driver. Go to Start>All Programs>Wacom Tablet>Wacom Tablet Preference File Utility. That's the one with which we can now save our preferences and from which we can load these back into Wacom whenever the need arises. Finally!!

This utility exists for a long while now. it goes many versions back.
Wacom is real bad, as far as it concerns my machine.
I still can't install any drivers later than 6.11. I constantly get "platform not supported"
It's real idiotic.

[ematecki]

This is a big, rich company and after all these years of selling way overpriced hardware they don't have the decency to spend some money on their software? How hard can it be to find someone to make a program that will remember its configured settings?

That's the bad thing about patents !
Wacom has a patent that locks anybody else from making a good tablet.
Now they rule the world of tablets, and do whatever threy wishes, and don't do whatever they don't like to do.

[Paul Fierlinger]

And it still isn't over for me -- it turns out that the last driver has some serious bugs, one of which is that you can't install more than one pen if you use the classic pen. Asaf, the installer has been improved in this update and seems to work much better and it's better designed but I'm not sure that you can save more than just one configuration.

The basic problem with their software has been this pattern of inconsistent behavior ... I have to wonder how many beta testers they have. Their excuse for the problems I'm having was that the 614-3 version came out just the day before yesterday and it hadn't been even publicized -- so was it released by mistake? Quite some tome ago I was asked by them if I was interested in beta testing. I am interested, so I answered all their questions and never got an answer. I doubt that there are too many people who work with a Wacom as many hours per day as I do -- who could be more suited for testing?

Right now I have the tablet running with the pen I like so I'm OK -- I spent hours on the phone with a technician who didn't know a couple of things I did so it was a useful experience... for them.

[isd]

OKAY, I called Customer Help and the nice young man (American) helped me work through it. There's a bug )known to him) in driver 612 which holds on to preferences and won't allow 614 to start fresh. He had me uninstall Wacom and reinstall the lates driver 614-3 WITH MY CLASSIC PEN. Not the grip pen and not with a mouse and that's the magic handshake; that forced 614 to open fresh. It feels like spring outside...

Wacom america is rather helpful(by comparison). I couldn't get any help of any kind from Wacom Japan, and I was finally rescued by someone from Wacom america when I had a big problem with a driver 2 years ago.