Project Patchouli: Open-source electromagnetic drawing tablet hardware

For the last few years, I have been using small Wacom Intuos S tablets as a replacement for mice, trackballs or touchpads.

I configure the tablets in the "Relative" mode, in which they behave exactly like a mouse, unlike in their default "Absolute" mode. I configure left click to be done by touching the tablet with the stylus and the 2 buttons that are on the stylus to generate right click and double left click.

The advantage over a mouse or trackball is the much more comfortable position of the hand and also the much higher speed and accuracy of positioning. Moving the pointer to any location on the screen is instantaneous and without any effort, due the lightness of the stylus and to the lack of contact with the tablet.

Because the stylus is extremely light, I can touch type on the keyboard while still keeping the stylus between my fingers. This allows faster transitions between keyboard and graphic pointer than with a standard mouse (because the time needed to grip the mouse is eliminated). Only when I type longer texts, I drop the stylus on the tablet.

The tablet is no bigger than a traditional mouse pad, so it does not need a bigger space on the desk.

After switching to use exclusively a graphic tablet, I would never want to use again a mouse, trackball, trackpoint or touchpad. I only regret that I have never thought earlier to try this.

Besides being a better mouse than a mouse, a tablet obviously allows to do things for which a mouse is inappropriate, e.g. drawing or handwriting (e.g. for signing a document).

I should mention that I have always used the Wacom tablets with Linux. I have never tried them on Windows, so I do not know if there they work as well.

Yes, but Wacom recently discontinued macOS driver support for older versions of the Intuos, and I had to downgrade to an older driver to make it work.

When it doesn’t anymore I’ll need to get something else, probably an iPad so I can also use it as a 2nd screen.

Possibly not the use-case you're thinking of, but I've been using a Wacom Intuos tablet as a mouse replacement for a few years now on MacOS and on Linux. I use it in pen mode (where the area of the tablet maps to the screen) - you can also configure it in mouse mode (like a touchpad, where the movement is relative to where the cursor is on the screen) which should work better with multi-display setups, though it's not to my preference. I have my pen/stylus setup so that tapping it onto the tablet acts as a left/primary click, the larger button on the pen is right click, and holding the smaller button and dragging on the tablet is scroll/pan).

MacOS is well-supported once the drivers are installed, though sometimes the driver doesn't seem to pick up tablet (either after the laptop or tablet goes to sleep). Restarting the driver fixes this, though this bug seems to have been fixed in the latest driver release. Linux works out of the box (at least on KDE/Arch), though sadly customization support on Wayland isn't quite there yet compared with what you could do on X11 (with the xsetwacom utility). For drawing support though it should work perfectly but as far as I know you can't the the button functionality, which is a bummer when using it as a pointing device.

The main benefit for me is that it feels much more ergonomic compared with a regular mouse or even a vertical mouse or trackball and I don't get anywhere near as much wrist or shoulder pain - especially in the cold temps in the middle of winter where I am. There is a bit of an adjustment period and I find for interacting with small UI elements such as buttons it can be a bit tricky, but for me the benefits outweigh the downsides. The only other downside I can think of is that when using the tablet over bluetooth (wired is also an option and tracks a little more smoothly) the battery only lasts 1½ days compared with the weeks/months a wireless mouse would go for.

I'm an artist and haven't used a mouse since somewhere in the 00's when I developed some RSI in my index finger while working in the Flash animation mines.

Annoyances: games that require you to push the cursor against the edge of the screen to move the view, app/website developers who force tiny scrollbars that constantly hide themselves despite me setting the OS to never hide scrollbars, having to restart the tablet drivers most of the time when I move between having the laptop docked with the big screen and big tablet on the desk, and taking it out to a cafe or the park and using the smaller tablet that lives in my laptop bag.

Personally I preferred Boylestad as well as Sedra & Smith.

Boylestad was an excellent first look at electronics with S&S being great for going in-depth on some topics.