The PenKeyboard from UC-Logic in Melbourne is a pretty funky idea, and one that appealed to me as soon as it was pitched. What we have here is a keyboard with a pressure sensitive digitising tablet built into the right-hand side of it.

Unfortunately, this is where my liking for the device ended. The first disappointment was that to physically accommodate the digitising pad the keyboard layout has had to be altered to resemble something similar to a notebook. So if you like to use the arrow keys and numeric keypad then turn the page.

As a graphics professional I really wanted to like this product but unfortunately it is far too clumsy in all respects to be of much use. I first attempted to make handwritten signatures on documents, handwritten notes and letters for that personal touch, sketched diagrams, and charts inserted into reports and the like. The tiny size of the sensitive area of the pad really limits how useful it can be for any of the tasks, and no matter how much I practised, or how neat I tried to be, my handwriting never came out as anything more than a barely recognisable scrawl.

A positive here is the useful little programs that come with the PenKeyboard. They are PenSigner, PenMail and Annotate for Word. PenSigner generates a window for you to create your drawings or graphs in then promptly inserts them into the last active window you were using. PenMail allows you to handwrite or draw an email and then opens your email program and attaches the document for you. Annotate for Word enables you to scrawl all over Word documents as you would a real printout.

I was also interested in using the digitising tablet as an illustration aid. Compared to the Wacom Graphire2 (December 2001, page 92), this one nearly made me weep. Again, the size of the work area is the major bugbear here, but its ability to interpret my strokes was also very clumsy. Even after a reasonable amount of time spent in the devices control panel, I could not get the range of pressure sensitivity to my liking. I certainly would not recommend it as an artists tool.

The PenKeyboard also comes with a holder for the wireless pen and a copy of PainterClassic from MetaCreations, a great painting program lost on this device.

Id be very keen to check out some of the other devices in the range from UC-Logic/Zero1Tech that include a more keyboard-expanded version of this device and four standalone graphics tablets of varying sizes. Maybe one of these would prove more valuable.