So far I haven't been able to find any concrete info on the C3500's digitizer, only conjecture. I managed to find a display unit at the Arlington, VA Costco, but was unable to determine for myself if the digitizer was a Wacom one, and whether it was pressure sensitive, for the following reasons:

1. Unsurprisingly, there was no stylus provided (unlike the M205 sample at Best Buy)
2. The Intuos stylus I brought along did not work with it (though I'm hoping that this is because there was no Wacom TabletPC driver installed, and that the digitizer runs on a different frequency from the Intuos1, much like the incompatibility between the Intuos1 and Intuos2)

So, to sum up, I'm wondering if the digitizer is:

1. A Wacom digitizer (it's not listed on Wacom's site as one of its partners)
2. Pressure sensitive (and how many levels of such)

This is one of the main things I want to find out before diving in and purchasing one (well, that and the fact that my upcoming bonus is going towards my fiancee's long-overdue credit card debt, but that's another story).

LoTekK,

I've sent the url link of this thread to Averatec and maybe we can get an official answer for you. If we don't get one by this afternoon, I'll place a call and see if a technician can get us some details.

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The Averatec was made by FIC.

Today, there are 2 primary digitizer manufacturers: Wacom and Finepoint. As of today, you can physically see the difference because Finepoint pens have a battery in them. Of course, if Costco hid the pen that doesn't help!! Someone needs to let that manager know the pen wasn't teathered.

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Thanks for the clarification. I had perused the Wacom partner list and the thought that Averatec was affiliated with one of the listed partners had crossed my mind, but had no way of finding out. This helps immensely, especially since most other complaints I've read about (keyboard, heat, possible battery life, etc) have turned out to be moot points, after having checked it out firsthand. The keyboard I found to be actualy rather comfortable, as far as SFF notebooks go. And I was rather pleasantly surprised with the screen, which was much less susceptible to color shift than the M205.

Now all that remains is the 3D performance, which would really be more of a bonus than a necessity, at this point,since my primary uses for it would be for digital painting/sketching, and notetaking, when in slate mode.

Whoa. Just saw a post over on TabletPCBuzz that has me rather worried:

"Just to clear up the confusion, the Averatec does not use a Wacom digitizer. So the Penabled driver will not work with it.


-Dan Tower
Software Engineer
Wacom Technology"

Also,
"the digitizer.. It is not Wacom as noted and also as noted in another forum..the digitizer is not recognized by ANY adobe product and the there are no drivers for it. The pen is battey powered... and so you cannot use the pen in photoshop or anything in the creative suite box."


Apparently the digitizer and stylus come from UC Logic: http://www.uc-logic.com/main.htm

Seems more or less confirmed, from what I've been reading. Looks like the C3500 has taken a sudden fall out of my favor. Unless UC Logic comes out with some better drivers and control panel soon. :ermm:

We're still checking with Averatec on this.

Tomorrow I'll put a call into FICA to find out if they changed the digitizer since the engineering sample. They did change other features, so it's possible. :)

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Looking forward to hearing back. :)

Don't get me wrong, by the way. For non-artist types, the C3500 still seems like a fantastic buy. It's just not going to cut it for those looking to buy one as primarily an art tool. Ah well.

Oh, and as to the driver comment -- it doesn't quite make sense to me (maybe out of context) because of course there is a driver so the digitizer is recognized by the system. The software application provides pressure sensitivity by using the Tablet PC SDK (which Adobe Photoshop doesn't) or by loading a different / special driver (i.e. Wacom's pen-enabled driver). So, I think where you're going is that you hope Photoshop will change or UC Logic will issue special driver. The UC Logic questions are:

what levels of pressure sensitivity did the manufacturer allow?
what angles are enabled?

http://www.uc-logic.com/module.htm is a general spec and it's my understanding that manufacturers can adjust conditions to control power costs

We'll see what we can find out.

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Averatec just confirmed:

Pressure sensitvity: 512 levels

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Yeah, I read that it had 512 levels of pressure sensitivity (as well as tilt!), but that's all a moot point if the drivers aren't recognized by the major apps (from what I hear, there's no pressure sensitivity in the Adobe apps, nor in Painter, though more research will be necessary). I'm just hoping that this is a driver issue that UC Logic will sort out, stat. If they can sort it out, the C3500 may just get back on my shortlist. :)

[edit]
By the way, I realize I haven't thanked you and this forum for all the help and prompt responses. A big thanks goes out to you. :)
[/edit]

From my point of view, I see a small software issue with the Driver.

Does SP2 of WinXP solve that issue?

Also, do you need batteries in the pen?? and if so, how long is the battery life?

I called their 24x7 tech support line last night. The person couldn't identify the digitizer but stated the pen required batteries. The tech looked through several documents. The costco in Palmdale, CA though didn't have the pen with the display so I cannot confirm it.

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Hello everybody,

Just wanted to help out and answer this question quick. From what I know on the digitizer battery this seems to be some sort of size that is "AAAA". I did take one pen apart to see and it sure did have a battery that was just smaller then the AAA size of battery. As far as battery life I’m can’t remember the exact amount but it could be 3000+ hours? But I will check back to make sure. I hope this answered someone’s question

UPDATE,

Just a quick update on battery life.

Stylus Pen Battery Life = 4,000 hours (500 days based on an 8 hour operation mode per day) *
Stylus Pen Battery Type (1.5V, AAAA - Energizer E96)

I was interested in the Averatec 3500 as a machine that seemingly would fit my needs perfectly. I need something portable for working at odd times when I get a few minutes, and also to store ideas and documents. I also need to have decent entertainment value, and the ability to create CDs. And then I need to have graphics tablet capability for my non-professional artwork and photo retouching hobby.

Of course I was surprised that Photoshop and others don't work.

I've done a little digging. Most tablet-capable programs use the Wintab32.dll interface. In more recent incarnations of pen-based computing, I discover that Wintab has been discarded in favor of wisptis.exe (Windows Ink Services). There is also a shift to HID-based devices exclusively.

I hear that the digitizer in the C3500 is a serial-based version. What I believe is that the Windows driver for the digitizer, as it technically should, is only hooked to Ink Services. However, for some reason applications like Photoshop are not recognizing the presence of a tablet on wisptis, if it is not Wacom. Then Photoshop looks for a Wintab-standard device and also does not find one.

I only have a Wacom tablet, and no tablet PC, so I cannot verify much of this.
However, I have found that UC Logic was very compliant in 2001 by supplying their serial tablet protocol to a Linux driver effort. Apparently all UC Logic tablets used the same protocol. I also discovered that the later Aiptek Hyperpen tablets used a protocol that was only two bytes different from the UC Logic protocol. Aiptek Hyperpen devices currently work in Photoshop. I would be interested to find out if the Aiptek devices use wintab or wisptis. There is also a currently working Aiptek Linux driver. It would be interesting to find out if that driver could be modified to work with the UC Logic protocol with minimal effort.

Another approach may be to somehow trick applications such as Photoshop into believing that a Wacom tablet is present. Obviously wisptis is working with the UC Logic digitizer; the disconnect is between the applications and wisptis. Wisptis should be providing generic tablet events regardless of what brand of tablet is installed. I suspect that if normal XP was installed on the Averatec, and the normal serial driver installed from UC Logic, that Photoshop pressure sensitivity would work through wintab. But if we can get Photoshop and other programs to realize that a wisptis-compliant tablet is actually there, we might get this to work. Perhaps it could be as simple as a registry setting.

Of course, Photoshop may never have been compliant with anything other than wintab. In that case, the Averatec driver is only compatible with wisptis, since the Windows applications work correctly. It may be that Averatec made their own wisptis compliant driver, and are not using the UC logic driver at all.

I don't think this is directly helpful to anyone, but I hope it might put someone on the right path. I'd definitely suggest investigating Aiptek and possibly asking UC Logic for some guidance.

I'm expecting my C3500 in the next couple of weeks and will be putting Corel Graphics Suite 12 pretty much as soon as it arrives. I'll at least be able to tell people if that combo works with the pressure/tilt.