It's good to have friends in Sales & Marketing. Courtesy of the great folks over at Wacom, I'm now the very proud owner of a Graphire Bluetooth Tablet. I also took posession of some videos explaining how Wacom gear works with Windows Vista (more on this anon) which can be viewed here, here, here, here and here.
Actually installing the hardware was easy as. Out of the box and onto the desk it goes, in goes the rechargable lithium-polymer battery, on goes the charging cord, and the included bluetooth dongle goes into a handy USB port (or not, if you have it built in, as one of my notebooks does). Windows Vista takes care of installing this device with no issues, then it's a simple matter of adding a new device in windows while activating the 'connect' feature of the tablet with a little button on the base.
From here, all easy. Then came the tablet driver bit. Three attempts with the bundled driver was enough - clearly the driver isn't Vista-compatible despite the fact that it shipped with a prominent 'Windows Vista' decal. Luckily, the Wacom site has this driver, which does work, and from there, plain sailing.
So what does it offer me? Well, for one thing it's wireless, so I can slip it into my laptop bag and have pen input anywhere. I get Vista's Tablet PC features without investing in a tablet PC, and I get gesture control and other nifty stuff. Now all I have to do is re-learn how to use one, as my previous Wacom Pen Partner has been at end-of-life for, oh, years. I'm quite looking forward to sitting in the pub, tablet on knee, laptop on table, and drawing terrible things for the amusement of all.
Photos available here - oh, and it retails for about 400 bucks. Thanks Wacom!