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The pen works okay, but the software and mouse are a joke.

When I opened the box and took out the pad, it seemed really durable and heavy. “Nice,” I thought all happy and excited to try this gadget out. Then I took out the mouse and the darn thing rattled like a box of rocks. I thought it was broke but closer inspection into an aperture under the battery compartment revealed some kind of electromagnet suspended by a thin wire, which clanked around. “Cheesy,” I thought, starting to get worried. Maybe the mouse isn’t supposed to be that way, maybe it actually was broke, but it worked in its own crummy fashion. Compared to my optical mouse, using this cheesy thing felt like doing surgery with a pickaxe. Then the real problems started. They have bundled a drawing program, “Art Dabbler,” that is supposed to complement the basic functions of this hardware — the ability to utilize variable line thickness by varying the pen pressure, etc. The software application wouldn’t even launch on my XP system: I was given an error message, “not enough available memory to run art dabbler.” Well, I have 1 GB of DDR RAM installed on my Pentium 4, 2.66 GHz machine. I did a little snooping online and found that this software is three or four years old, and pretty much incampatible with XP. There were some suggestions on a public forum (where others were having the same problem) about changing virtual memory settings or disabling the paging file completely, and even if one were inclined to tamper with such settings for the sake of one outdated program, none of these things worked for me when I tried them. Even with a tweaked or disabled paging file setting, still the same message about insufficient memory. I also tried re-installing and running the program in compatibility mode, with the same result: “not enough memory.” Corel, who supposedly took over this “Art Dabbler” property from Meta Creations, doesn’t even acknowledge it on their website. That’s how behind-the-times it is. And Aiptek’s site has no postings addressing this issue. They have chosen to bundle their hardware with garbage software. So guess what? The whole kit and kaboodle gets returned.

Update (2/6/2012): This item is currently on sale here for the lowest price I’ve seen.

The featured review for this product, Aiptek HyperPen 8000U PC Tablet HYPERPEN8000U Electronics, was written by Chuck70.

The average rating for this item is 2 out of 5 stars, according to 3 reviews.