Aziz Ansari: “How’s those cashews Wacom?”

Wacom: “Hey they’re good…”

Aziz Ansari: “WHAT THE FUCK WACOM?!”

is what I thought the first time my friend plugged in her brand new Intuos tablet in her Windows 7  laptop. She had been using an old serial Intuos on an XP machine for years and was very excited to try out her new buy. The excitement lasted approximately the time it took for photoshop to start. The new software that comes with Wacom Tablets is so fucking annoying, I can’t think of ANY reason for the way it works now, other than a lot of crack smoking or an April’s Fool joke gone awfully awfully wrong.

The first of Wacom’s sins comes in the shape of a tray to the left of the screen that pops its head out whenever your stylus touches the tablet. It’s not useful, it’s distracting, nobody loves him. NOBODY!

There’s also the VERY irritating “Press and Hold” feature that’s on by default. It makes your cursor hesitate for a split second every time you start to draw a line.

Some people may also find the new “Water Drop” animation annoying.

Here’s how to turn off those three fuckers:

1.  Turning off the tray:

Click on the thing, click Options, uncheck everything in there.

Done

2. Turning off the “Press and Hold” bullshit:

Go to the Windows Control Panel

Select “Hardware and Sound”

Select “Pen and Touch”

Select “Press and hold”, click the Settings button

Uncheck “Enable press and hold for right-clicking”

Click OK

3. Turning off the Water Drop animation

This one is a bit trickier. There was a simpler way in Vista apparently. But yeah, Microsoft…

So first, you need to check if your account has administrative rights. Type “run” in the search thing in the Windows menu, then [enter]. This should open the “Run” dialog. In there, type “gpedit.msc” then [enter]. If you get a warning message saying you’re not administrator and bla bla bla, close everything and go to:

Windows menu -> All Programs -> Accessories

Right-click the “Command Prompt” icon, and choose Run as administrator. Of course you need the admin password. If you don’t have it, you’re screwed.

Now, in the command prompt window that you’re running as administrator, type “gpedit.msc”. Should work fine.

Time to find the policy responsible for the water drop animation.

In “User Configuration”, go to:

Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Tablet PC -> Cursors

In there, double click “Turn off pen feedback”, select “Enabled”, click OK.

Voila.

Have fun!

– D