Recently I had been playing with a small external Wacom Volito tablet. I wasn't too pleased with it, mainly because its build was too sloppy. As it's rubber feet were slipping away all the time it wasn't possible to use it with any accuracy. On the Windows Anywhere conference they handed out Wacom Saphire tablets as a reward for trying a tablet PC in the hands on lab. That tablet has the same digitizer surface (4 by 5 inch) but is far more robust. It's heavier and has 4 rubber feet instead of just 2. The result is heaven compared to hell: this one is stable and really works. As a bonus the pen has an extra (eraser) stylus on its back end.
Wacom also makes a lot of the digitizers built into tablet PC's. As an experiment I attached both external tablets to my tablet PC, fired up the tablet analyzer and scribbled away. The API reports three tablets: the display, an internal and an external one. It could not distinguish the two external ones. Both claim to report X and Y pen-tilt but alway return 0. Without any drivers installed the external tablets are mouse substitutions, with the saphire driver installed pen-pressure is reported from both external tablets. You cannot install the Volito driver and the Saphire driver at the same time. The pen of the Volito works slightly on the tablet PC, the saphire pen works only on the saphire.
What did I learn from this ? Wacom makes a lot of tablets, just one of them (the Volito) spoils their good name. The tablets are indistinguishable by the software, except for some API reported properties like integrated. The three tablet pens are not compatible on the hardware level.
Chaos as usual but I'm happy with my hardware upgrade.