LE1700 - portable cintiq - IT WORKS! - now with video!

[Arshes Nei]

Right now got a friend messing with the one I ordered. the model I ordered is the single core LE1600

From his impressions, the stylus is kinda wonky, since it only has 1 switch...I noticed wacom produced a duo switch stylus with eraser for about $50.00 so that might be an option. The reason for the why it's a bit "Wonky" is because the rubber grip and switch swing around and you have to fumble/feel for the button the grip covers.

Why a Duo Switch recommendation? Being able to program 2 buttons works really well since many you can hotkey. One key I think is important for one switch is a Tab or Pan button. Since many programs default to TAB as full screen mode you can get quite a bit more real estate since Tablet PCs have relatively small screens. I could of course script it with Auto Hotkey and Smart GUI to have it as a floating button. Panning would also be something frequently used due to "screen real estate" .Frequently used switch is the "Eyedrop tool" when painting so it's second nature. Having one button makes it a bit more cumbersome.

From an old post Shogmaster has said that UD series pens, Intuos 1 Artz II and old UD model cintiqs will work on this tablet PC.

He said he's experiencing lag, and I suspect it's a driver conflict with certain programs so I need to make sure he has TabTip tamer enabled to cope with it or he may have a driver conflict. (I get to play his IT often even though we're on different coasts).

I'd recommend putting TabTipTamer as a program startup if you're a tablet PC user. In XP on the the Folder window enable search. Then type Shell:Startup (top part like the "address bar") which will take you to where your startup programs will be. Create a shortcut to TabtipTamer and place it in there. Now whenever you start up the tablet it will enable that program.

What we did find out is that Wacom's Tablet PC drivers do not work. You need to install the Bamboo/Graphire drivers to enable pressure sensitivity. I think Wacom should update the site/link to drivers since they haven't touched them since 2008.

Now, yes there is definitely a difference between 256 levels of pressure sensitivity and 1024 (or 2048) but pressure sensitivity is pressure sensitivity which you do not really get with Capacitive touch tablets. It's enough levels to get the job done.

If Sai gives you lag, per Portus' suggestion - change the stablizer. It was on 3 by default and raising it to 15 for some reason corrected the lag, and moving it to different settings it's not as bad.

In terms of interfaces with software here's a rundown from what I see.

Sketchbook Pro: king of Tablet PC interfaces. No surprise since it was made with a tablet PC in mind. The ability to save as a PSD makes it good since you can just easily port the file over to your regular PC once you get the basics down and finish off your drawing.

Artrage: A lot of ArtRage's interface is similar to sketchbook Pro, sans gestures of course. Low resources and just plain fun on a tablet PC.

Photoshop - seems to have the least friendly interface for a tablet PC. This is at least true with CS.

Painter. For all my complaints about the ugly GUI, Painter seems to have some better controls when it comes to working with just a tablet PC screen (sans keyboard). For example, Painter's document window excels because the controls are easily accessible on the bottom. You have a slider to adjust the zoom. The Navigation window (while we do still want the ability to have a separate adjustable one) makes panning around the document extremely easy.

The other thing is how we can make palettes for favorite brushes in Painter, this also goes for commands which make it a lot easier to work with. Undo and redo commands can be put on that dock. ... now if they had the "dock n' tuck" interface for their palettes it would be beautiful.


Easy Paint Tool Sai - also well done interface for a tablet PC. Most of what you will need is on the interface.

I'll give more updates. I went with the LE1600 btw as the "Test" couldn't go for the $700 ( I tend not to spend over $500 on laptops...so I'd rather try a lower end model and resell it to someone in my area than spend more and not like it at all and deal with patrons on ebay) ones right now but since LE1600 items (cept for RAM irrc) are pretty much swappable with the LE1700 models less items to have to replace. For example got the extended battery which works on both models, as do those keyboards that latch over the front of the slate.

As far as speed. I'm not doing 3d work. I am an illustrator so really, if people can work and sketch on a DS or iPad this really isn't much different.

Hopefully this info would help anyone out. Also I highly recommend a View Anywhere screen if you're going to be outdoors or moving around without an adapter more.

One question for some folks. I noticed people using gaming pads. How about one of those number pads instead for programming shortcuts?

[Arshes Nei]

Adding on, there is one left from Arbor Hospice on Ebay that was relisted if you don't mind paying $260 for 30gb 512mb ram.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=110532895046

[hyperfinite]

If you're experiencing brush lag on your tablet pc, tabtiptamer gets a small part of the job done, but doesn't really help your system resources at all since you're still running all the laggy tablet pc services and tabtiptamer on top of them.

Most of the brush lag can be eliminated by simply setting your tablet to "Hover Click" instead of "Click and Tap" or "Press and Hold" or whatever they can't agree on calling it and disabling flicks. In the Windows 7 Control Panel, go into the Wacom Pen Tablet Properties>Advanced dialog and select Hover Click. Then go into the Pen and Touch settings and make sure 'Use the pen button as a right click[...]' is selected. After that, highlight the 'Press and hold' Pen action, click on Settings, and disable Press and hold. Finally, disable Flicks through the Flicks tab while you're at it. The brush lag mostly comes from the OS trying to figure out whether you're starting a press and hold right click or performing a gesture whenever you use the stylus. Both of these are useless for us since we just want to paint, and I cannot recommend you disable them enough.

If you still have an unacceptable amount of brush lag even after disabling the above, consider a more extreme alternative like TabTipTamer or disabling the Tablet PC Input service altogether.

Since your LE1600 only supports a max of 2gb of ram (Motion says the LE1600 only supports 1.5gb ram, but they're wrong, just use a single 2gb dimm), you need all the ram you can get, and I recommend disabling the Tablet PC Input service if you can live without it.

In the latest wacom drivers, merely disabling the service bricks stylus input until you re enable the Input service. The key is to disable the Wacom Virtual (this is important, there are two wacom HID drivers) HID driver from the Device Manager first, and then disable the Tablet PC Input service, which gets rid of all the Microsoft tablet PC fluff. If you re enable the Virtual HID driver without making sure the Input service is running first, you again lose stylus input. The upside is that you don't have to restart the computer or anything: just disable the pair in proper sequence and you can happily enable and disable tablet pc functionality as you need to.

However, the problem with disabling the Virtual HID driver is that when you enter the Ctrl+Alt+Del splash screen or the startup/shutdown screens among others, your stylus won't work. This isn't that big of a deal with the navigation buttons on your LE1600, but is still annoying and worth mentioning.

This is why I recommend TabTipTamer as a last resort: for the most part, disabling press and hold and flicks should be enough, but if it isn't just remove the Microsoft tablet pc front-end entirely. Only if you absolutely have to retain tablet pc functionality for whatever reason should you use TabTipTamer.

You are correct, the Bamboo drivers are the most recent tablet pc compatible drivers, although I believe the Wacom Europe drivers are technically the newest tablet pc specific drivers aside from the hokey pre alpha developer drivers on the ftp site. Bamboo drivers followed by Wacom EU drivers are the best, most stable for Windows 7, although I was using one of the 5.08 versions off the ftp site that seemed to work well with the Windows 7 RC.

All penabled tablet pcs use the same technology, and any UP/UD series stylus is pretty much interchangeable. The really good ones, including the Cintiq pens and the duo switch tablet pc stylus, are still available direct from wacom too.

As for a compact keyboard, I suggest springing for something bluetooth if you can afford it. One of the best things a slate tablet pc has to offer is that it can be spun around like a sketchpad, and a wired keyboard diminishes that.

[Arshes Nei]

Does this also count for XP?

The Duo Switch Tablet PC stylus (with eraser) is actually not in stock, it's listed as backorder on US Wacom site. The artz II which is the same series of digitizer compatible ones are in stock at 50 but I found a site selling UP-801-E for 30 something.

I am still learning Auto Hotkey and would like to create a GUI for Undo/Redo (Step Backward/Forward in PS) Tab, Alt (that stays held till tapped again), Space (also held till tapped again), CTRL (stays down till released). B for Brush.

I know Shepy's Modlock does part of those functions but causes some pressure sensitivity loss.

Would you know of a script already out or how to create where it would be on the "Title Bar" window in XP/win 7 so it takes up the least used real estate on screen?

[hyperfinite]

The above should count for XP:Tablet for the most part, I think everything is named roughly the same thing and in similar locations. I haven't used XP:Tablet since the first day the Win7 RC was released, but it was all pretty much the same, although I'm not sure whether you have to go through the hassle of disabling the Virtual HID driver on XP:T.

If you set a stylus button to the wacom pop-up menu, you can record keystroke macros and execute them from the menu. However, I love me some pressure hold, and prefer to have a stylus button set to that if possible/instead.

As I prior alluded to, the buttons next to the screen on the LE1600 can be reprogrammed to whatever you want them to be. While some of the buttons like the navigation buttons and ctrl+alt+del button are best left alone, the dashboard button, rotate screen button, and various program shortcut buttons are potentially great candidates for the modifier keys.

I'm not sure of any AHK alternatives that do exactly what you're looking for, and I seem to remember AHK having some buggy behavior trying to put anything in or on top of the title bar. I used to use a script that put playback shortcuts and song progress for winamp on the title bar, but I had to disable it because the titlebar text kept disappearing and the glyphs kept disappearing and turning into black opaque boxes. This was way back on Win2k though, so things may have gotten better by now. AHK still has the topic and code example though, here's the link: Serenity's Title Bar/Launcher script.

You may also want to have a look at the AHKOSK project, a fully customizable OSK with at least some of the functionality you're looking for.

If you're determined enough, you should be able to grab what you need from Serenity's code and the OSK and frankenstein them into something that does most of what you want.

Again though, you're using a machine with very limited system resources and while reconfiguring the hardware shortcut buttons and the wacom pop up menu may be a bit more cumbersome to use in the end, accomplishing mostly the same functionality in situ through software is just going to add more overhead to the memory stack.

[Arshes Nei]

Right, I had suggested using the dashboard to my friend in possession of the tablet right now, he said you had to press 2 buttons to get the functionality?

I just figured creating a few hotkeys on screen may be enough to get by. A lot of travelling around to functions can be minimized. Example: Painter (11) palettes are great in a sense due to being able to record commands. I know CS(3) has action palette too. He said he was getting Lag in OC and Photoshop CS3 - I told him to use an old legacy copy of CS I have to see if that helps since newer software tends to be more demanding

I'll try to see if he can disable and re-enable the drivers to reduce the lag. I think in XP the hover/click you can't totally disable but there is a slider, so maybe making it longer might help too.

He seems to have taken a liking to Sketchbook Pro which is understandable because it was made for tablet PCs.

From what I understand AHK now seems to be a lot less resource intensive than its earlier days. I'll see if I can just give him a few buttons and just need to be more patient with learning the scripting language.

Thanks for answering my questions.

[hyperfinite]

I'll try to see if he can disable and re-enable the drivers to reduce the lag. I think in XP the hover/click you can't totally disable but there is a slider, so maybe making it longer might help too.

I'm fairly sure you can disable press and hold from within XP, I thought it was under Tablet & Pen Settings>Pen Options>Press and Hold, much like Win7. If that isn't the case, here's the registry key to do the same:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Wisp\Pen\SysEventParameters:
HoldMode=dword:0x03

[Arshes Nei]

Thanks,

It is indeed a registry edit according to this article: http://www.luckymethod.com/2009/12/d...wacom-tablets/

I had looked at the various forums talking about the LE1600 (LE1700 too) but didn't receive much on the art side, so in a way I'm extremely glad we're talking about the tablet here. That or the posts were quite old.

[Jaredia123]

after reading through this thread, I bought a Motion LE1600 1.5Ghz 1Gb & 30Gig. I got it on Ebay for 235+17 shipping with buy it now. I'm really excited to get it and set it up the way everyone has found to be optimal. I plan on using it with Sketchbook Pro & Painter. I also have a Cintiq21 but this will be great for a traveling sketchbook which was what I was looking for right now.
Once I get it i'll make sure to make some videos of setup and doodling on it. Thanks for all the info that helped make my decision!
Oh and for $252 with shipping i think i got a hell'of'a'deal!

[jarbot]

So i am contemplating forking over the big bucks for an LE1700 but i tend to be a tech savy geek at times and im starting to wonder if the LE is just a little too dated at this point.

http://www.slashgear.com/motion-to-r...te-bar-234461/

keep in mind im new to art but im an aerospace engineer that is great with Pencil sketches and not much else,....

i mean this is simply amazing and a hell of a lot cheaper,....

http://www.slashgear.com/hantech-sis...nally-2644675/

or slim and sexxy(ier)

http://www.umpcportal.com/2009/12/co...haiku-of-2010/

but even more mainstream how about the HP TM2's or the upcoming Acer Aspire 1825PT or 140PT.

i mean can the LE even compete with whats on the cusp of the tech world out there,... not to mention how it compares to the tabletkiosls sahara,..

i mean can any of these other devices handle run sketchbook, cause my iphone can and that is crazy or photoshop. i dont want to have to get a cintiq cause im still only at the hobby level and trying to get out of the graphite dark ages,....

just throwin it out there,....

hit me up im thinking of getting an LE1700 from gainsavers tomorrow and im worried about screen quality,... im unemployed now and looking to a career change,...

[jarbot]

Sorry one last thing,...

do any of you have the WriteTouch option i guess,... i would love the ability to rotate, zoom and other stuff with simple hand gestures on the screen,.. ok so i may have been watching too much ironman 2 or minority report but it would be a great feature while sketching with one hand and zoomming, panning, rotating with the other,....

passive/active resistive or capacitive,.....

this link suggests the LE has it
http://www.slashgear.com/motion-to-r...te-bar-234461/

[hyperfinite]

If you're looking for a low powered sketch pad that's only marginally uncomfortable to hold for hours on end, the LE1700 should be sufficient, as should one of the similar Fujitsu models. Don't spend more than $500 for a three year old tablet; there's better newer tablets out there for that price, and there isn't much you can do to improve the performance beyond dropping a bit more ram in.

Be very careful what kind of tablet technology you get, and avoid touch screens: you either work in pen mode without touch sensitivity, or touch mode without pen sensitivity to prevent false touch input while using the stylus. However, if the stylus gets more than an inch or so away from the digitizer, it switches to touch mode. This can really get messy if you rest the heel of your hand on the screen while painting. So, you'll pretty much be forced to turn touch sensitivity off whenever you paint. Additionally, while the stylus digitizer is behind the screen, touch panels go in front of the screen and add *very noticeable* haze and noise artifacting to the screen from my experience. You can't get rid of this, and I've returned two touch screen tablets, one resistive and one capacitive multitouch, ultimately due to the crappy display more than the annoying behavior.

N-Trig finally released a driver with pressure sensitivity in Photoshop et al, however all N-Trig tablets as far as I know have a touch screen as well, so I'm still going to recommend sticking to Wacom Penabled tablet PCs without touch input.

[Jaredia123]

Just a quick reply, got my LE1600 today and I love it! Installed Sketchbook Pro and it runs perfectly, no lag. I basically just wanted to use it as a sketchbook at work and I think it will be perfect..at least for me.

[sone_one]

i got the le1700 3 hours ago and i havent had such a charming moment since i met my girlfriend 8 years ago.

at first it feels a little wonky, but i can already see that this is going to change my work.

i have to go over this thread again now to adapt it to its best, just wanted to chime in and tell you how excited i am .

also big thanks to salaryman since his review been a huge factor.

[sone_one]

hit me up im thinking of getting an LE1700 from gainsavers tomorrow

as i mentioned earlier ive been about to do the same. i actually had already ordered. the payment options available been cheque or western union. because i didnt know what western union is i did some research. there its been mentioned that it should only be used if you absolutely trust the one youre sending the money to. that made me think about doing a research about gainsaver, and to say the reviews are devastating is kind of an understatement.
i cancled the order and reset all my account details immediately.

i finally bought from this guy and am pretty satisfied. (i chose this one because hes been the only one whos been shipping to europe.)

[Arshes Nei]

hit me up im thinking of getting an LE1700 from gainsavers tomorrow and im worried about screen quality,... im unemployed now and looking to a career change,...

People have mentioned don't use gainsavers, so try another spot to get the tablet.

[jarbot]

Ha well I decided to bite the bullet and order the LE1700 I figure even if the new great tech develope comes out next month for tablet (I'm totally predicting a completey portable fully functioning tablet that would surpass the the cintiq for art and an Alienware for computing and can fit to the size of your palm and designed just for artist with holographic interface,... Lol ok little carried away) but it would be 5 or more years before I could aford it.

So I decided for the LE from eBay buyer saw one for 500 and was set to buynow then paypal exploded in my face and 300 bucks later paypal is still causing a delay that will force it to ship next Friday,... I thought I was doing good staying away from gainsavers lol. Bummer,....

[megmin]

Iam quite interested in this but i have one question about nibs.
how are the nibs? is it made up of plastic or some other solid material. with daily usage won't the nibs get flattened. In that case what should we do?

[sone_one]

for the standard pen that comes with the pc, looks like it is plastic (almost like a bamboo pen) and not exchangeable. no idea about the wear yet.

[Arshes Nei]

You can use the same nibs you got from your other Wacom tablets with this one.There isn't really much wear. Remember these machines are rather old now, so nib wear wasn't some issue unlike the newer Bamboos and Intuos 4. So if you got a felt/spring or other fancy nib from your intuos kit or ordered them - you can use them on these pens.

(on a side note, I really wish I'd stop hearing about "nib wear" questions on every tablet/tablet pc - it's mostly the intuos4 and bamboo [which are NEW tablet lines] with the biggest nib issue and geeze nibs are replaceable it's not that big of a deal).

[Arshes Nei]

Has anyone tried the Scribbler 4100?

I personally have not tried the tablet, and I do know that some forums for tablet pcs have said they're alright.

The one thing that bothers me though, as hyperfinite has pointed out - touch and stylus tend not to mix as an artist especially if you tend to lean or place your hand on the screen. That said, I'll look around and post some reviews if I can find some.

Here's one: http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/showthre...040#post321040

[Jaredia123]

here's a quick caricature (not that good) I did in Sketchbook Pro on my motion LE1600. feels great still getting used to digital drawing.

[gloriapike]

I just got an LE1700 a couple of weeks ago. I've been using a tablet (first an acecat then a bamboo) for about 7 years, so the tablet PC is going to take some getting used to, for me. Mine has 2 GB of RAM and seems to run Windows 7 quite smoothly.

My only problem so far is that sometimes the screen doesn't seem nearly bright enough... usually in well-lit rooms. I'm also having to get used to the variable screen angle (since I usually hold it on my lap to use it). But I am having good results so far! Also having to contend with the smaller screen size, but i can deal with that.

One thing I'm kind of disappointed in is that the buttons on the tablet don't function... is there any way to turn those back on and map them to common keyboard functions, perhaps?

I like sketchbook pro, although frankly I find Paint Tool Sai easier to work in even on the tablet - probably because that's what I'm accustomed to using.

Here's a commission I just finished - my first work on the LE1700:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...ackalcolor.jpg

I think i was having a bit of trouble working out how dark to make my shading, but overall it was not a bad experience! Hopefully with more practice I'll become comfortable with this device!

[Arshes Nei]

You need to make sure you have all of Motion LE's drivers installed, especially the dashboard. http://www.motioncomputing.com/suppo..._1700_win7.asp

[sone_one]

i agree on the screen brightness, its not as view anywhere as i would have expected. other than that i just love it. theres some sketches i did on it in my sketchbook if youre interested.

[Arshes Nei]

LE1600 view anywhere vs LE1700 view anywhere.

[Twan]

damn, last year i bought a new tablet intuos 3 and a new pc for 900$ , and i found this wonderfull tablet pc on a website for only 530$
kill me, please

[Bondok]

Thanks all for posting this thread.
I'm on TabletPCReview.com all the time but no one really has an artist perspective that's useful to me.

So I'm a bit of a tech head as well as an artist wanting to get back into doing digital work. And when I mean get back, I mean I have a ArtZ II 12x12 sitting by my desk that doesn't work with any of my new hardware... I think it has a intuous pen that will work on tablets

In reviewing the various systems and reviews from TabletBuzz, TablePCReview, a few blogs and now here at ConceptArt.. I'm still lost on what is best for the money.

My key need is, performance, reliability and some what durable.
(I got a lil 3 y/o terror who likes to step on things..)
My budget is under 1500USD and I'm planning on using Photoshop, Illustrator, Painter or Sketchbook and Zbrush.

I'll be doing photo manipulation for some photography I'm doing as well as doing design work to build on my folio.
I understand the LE1700 is great for sketching/painting but what about some of the other things an artist might do? Like possible web site UI design? (obviously you may need a keyboard for coding a bit)

Has anyone used a Fujitsu 900 or 4410, HP TM2t or 4740p?

Given the tech market is shifting with a lot of new Tablet/Slates, is it worth buying anything around 1000-1500 right now or should I just wait out?

Any feedback is surely helpful! thanks ahead,

Bondok

[Arshes Nei]

I just recently purchased an LE1700 so will be upgrading from my LE1600 and will be taking it for a test drive too. This one I purchased 12" screen 1400x1050 Resolution - ViewAnywhere Display. I'm definitely excited since I'll be using it for some schooling.

[nickzucc]

I just purchased a Motion Computing LE 1600 off of ebay. I was able to pick it up for about 260 dollars.

I must say I am rather impressed with the device.

I was able to install Painter 11 and Photoshop CS5 and both programs run just great! I am keeping the file sizes under 3000 pixels in the longest dimension but I am only using this as a digital sketch pad so this is not a problem for me.

I was also able to upgrade the ram from 1.5 gigs to 2 gigs by getting a 2 Gig memory stick. This cost me 80 dollars at Bestbuy (I think this was quite a bit, I'm sure you could find it for cheap on ebay.)

The only downside for me is that the pen only has one button on it. I really wish it had two buttons. (Does anyone know if I can use a Bamboo pen now that I am using those drivers?)

I mapped everything I need to the button on the pen but I really could use a dedicated right click button.

I have the latest Bamboo drivers installed and they are working well except for one minor issue, in Photoshop CS5 every now and then the pen freaks out and lays down a super thick line. It seems as if it looses pressure sensitivity momentarily. I have an undo mapped so it is easy to get rid of, it doesn't happen all that often but I would really love to get rid of this little bug. I have not noticed this happening in Painter 11 though. (someone else ran into this issue and they started a thread about it here: http://community.wacom.com/forums/gr...ics/thread/395)

If you are on the fence about this like I was.....GET IT!!!! It rocks! I have a Wacom Cintiq 21 UX at home and now I have this for the road.

I will say that I would suggest that you have at least 2 batteries (the one I have is old and only holds a charge for 45-60 minutes.)

I would also get the extended battery as well.

I would also get the "view anywhere" screen if you can. Everything is fine with mine inside under the correct lighting conditions but it is very hard to see outside.

I was waiting and waiting to see if someone would put out a windows 7 slate/tablet. They are coming in the future.....but decided not to wait any longer. Why wait for the future when everything you need is here in the now?

Good luck!