Jump to content
You must now use your email address to sign in [click for more info] ×

Recommended Posts

21 hours ago, SrPx said:

Your issues with the driver are IMO not very common

Yes, I acknowledged that. My system is not typical - I've got well over 200 programs installed, including driver shims and many low-level utilities. Of all the drivers I have installed, however, only the Wacom drivers misbehave. Wacom, for all their resources, have not found a solution for corner-cases where their drivers fail.

A good example is the long list of rather technical steps provided to roll back their drivers. In short order, someone knowledgeable in the procedure could create a program to do this so the customer doesn't have to. I returned the tablet because I had problems with two consecutive versions of the driver and I wasn't willing to invest the time to roll back through their many versions until I found one compatible with my system.

21 hours ago, SrPx said:

As in 95% of the cases a reboot ain't needed. Is just a reboot of the service. And sometimes, a system reboot would not fix it, but rbooting the service several times (in my case, in very rare cases) would do

Interesting, but is this really something a customer should have to know how to do to keep their hardware connected? Tablets are built for people who use computers as a tool rather than a computer hobbyist who might know about (and have the courage to) dink with services!

21 hours ago, SrPx said:

the "issue" is that most people WONT uninstall FULLY the wacom driver previous to install a new tablet's brand driver

There should be no driver collision if things are written properly. But if the old drivers do need to be installed, the issue is that Wacom doesn't fully uninstall their drivers when told to do so. No user should ever have to manually uninstall anything, let alone a driver!

21 hours ago, SrPx said:

Even so, I've my hopes this Intuos 4 Pro XL will last another 10 years more

I hope it does too My problem with Wacom isn't the hardware - the quality of my little table was quite good and I expect it would have lasted for many years. I just can't deal with the driver issues.

Windows 11 Pro, XP-Pen Deco 03, AP, AD & APub

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, casterle said:

There should be no driver collision if things are written properly.

In theory, you are right about that. Unfortunately, this is almost impossible to fully achieve in the real world because of the huge variety of OS & hardware configurations, the potential interactions between different drivers from different sources that may need to access the same APIs or other resources in specific orders, & the difficulty of determining which items that one installed driver may require may also be required by another.

The 'proper' way to do this would be for every device maker to agree on a set of 'universal' standards & extensions, sort of like how USB class drivers & extensions are supposed to work to insure compatibility, but that degree of cooperation among competitors has historically been very difficult to get.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, R C-R said:

The 'proper' way to do this would be for every device maker to agree on a set of 'universal' standards & extensions, sort of like how USB class drivers & extensions are supposed to work to insure compatibility, but that degree of cooperation among competitors has historically been very difficult to get.

This isn't really a USB issue. The issue is in the Wacom drivers, and, as you know, they are written to the OS manufacturer's specs which are well established and supported. 

I'm not sure what Wacom really by drivers. Since they are selling USB devices they should be using the class drivers provided with the OS. If they are installing drivers I expect they're shimming the existing drivers or perhaps replacing them. I'm not an expert on drivers by any means, but I once had one of my engineers write one for a client, so I know what's involved.

My best evidence is that Wacom tablets (I had an old Intuos a decade or so back as well) are one of the very few products I've had real driver issues with, and I had some odd stuff connected over the years :12_slight_smile:.

With luck my new Deco 03 will have more stable drivers. One of the reviews I read mentioned them specifically as being good.

 

Windows 11 Pro, XP-Pen Deco 03, AP, AD & APub

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, casterle said:

This isn't really a USB issue.

I did not say it was, only that one of the real world difficulties with this is sort of like integrating the generic USB class driver standards (relatively easy to create) with all the extensions necessary to support proprietary features of specific devices made by different manufactures, without creating conflicts (not so easy to create or get everyone to agree to).

1 hour ago, casterle said:

I'm not sure what Wacom really by drivers. Since they are selling USB devices they should be using the class drivers provided with the OS.

Generic class drivers would not support all the features those devices can support. That's why they come with software that must be installed to support everything.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry, took me a while to get back to this. Just got to be crazily busy with my freelancing, lately. But got a time-out now.  Apologies.

On 3/22/2019 at 6:13 PM, casterle said:

I'm a tablet newbie, just developing pen skills, so for me precision mode was a real asset. ;).

Well, in my experience, the precision mode, not that great for production work except some very specific cases. In the long run it is... slow. Again, IMO.

On 3/22/2019 at 6:13 PM, casterle said:

Re: size, I found it perfect for my situation. We downsized in 2017 and my office is now about half the size it used to be with, desk space at a premium. I will rearrange things to make space for the larger tablet, of course.

As I believe I mentioned, it is all about the task to do. The difficulties in art, and the absolute need for speed to get efficient money wise would eliminate in my case any space concern (ie, I'd make space even if I have to break the space time continuum with some Jedi quantum physics trick. (IKEA)). For line art for comics, or line art based illustration (inking) the larger the surface usually the better the line control. This goes also for the display-tablets like cintiq and alternatives. (of course, other things factor in). If one is 200% sure is never gonna ink a line, only digital paint, then a Deco 03 or Wacom "Medium" size (whatever the flavor) is enough. Even so, IMO, neither ideal. When I did never miss the extra inches, not even while using a Wacom SMALL, was while working at certain company doing a crazy ton of pixel art for mobile games for a whole year. Neither in photo retouch, and I've got confirmed this from people whose all activity is photo retouch (pro, very high level). Anyhow, to each is own, each person has own preferences. Vector work, due to by nature vectors being heavily stabilized/averaged, if not a style requiring crazy detail and with spontaneous strokes, but instead using of the usual node handles and stuff, well, in that case might suffice as well a Small, as also provides an easier access to mouse and keyboard. But IMO, an illustrator better have a minimum of a Deco 03, and ideally, a Wacom Large or a 20 - 22 display-tablet (surely XP-PEN or Huion (in that order, in my preference)). The struggles you can go, both while really getting a natural feel with a tablet, and getting even just an efficient enough control (been using tablets since '91 and I yet draw with more control on paper !) over the painting device, imo ends up putting priorities in its place : Desktop space, at least on ppl working professionally, is rarely the first factor.

On 3/22/2019 at 6:43 PM, casterle said:

Yes, I acknowledged that. My system is not typical - I've got well over 200 programs installed, including driver shims and many low-level utilities.

Yep, that's calling for instability, at least in Windows. Can't blame u, I probably have more....And if counting the uninstalled ones, is thousands, I very rarely do the OS uninstall. 

On 3/22/2019 at 6:43 PM, casterle said:

Of all the drivers I have installed, however, only the Wacom drivers misbehave.

They fail a lot, has been so since the beginning ( I have an Intuos 1, there was no the "Pro" distinction, even). In their defense, nearly all tablet brands in the market get complaints about the drivers. In a majority of cases I followed through : Users had not properly fully uninstalled all previous -whatever brand- drivers they had installed. Gotta say, in some cases, weird stuff going on with the Windows 7s freely upgraded to 10, and other special cases do happen: a myriad of other system related issues. Not always Wacom's fault. Often even caused by very poor user's system knowledge. But the large majority: not full uninstall of whatever previous drivers. And this do happen with both WACOM and alternatives ! . There are tho some more rare times when Wacom releases a driver with a bug that is very fast detected by the communities, and usually a quick roll back to an older driver fixes it (with all the uninstall thing, as a sane measure). But it has become less and less common to get Wacom faulty drivers of the kind of needing to be embarrassingly replaced by Wacom, usually very fast. Also, people tend to stay very long with a driver version that "works", and keep that version like a treasure, in case needing to go back ( I really mean fully uninstall and install) to that safe version.... I don't know... Once I got to know every typical Wacom driver issue, I stopped to have any real issue with any Wacom device, that's a fact. I'd be lying if telling otherwise. And is not that many issues. It all boils to a pair of them, and have repeatable ways to fix stuff in almost every system.

On 3/22/2019 at 6:43 PM, casterle said:

Interesting, but is this really something a customer should have to know how to do to keep their hardware connected? Tablets are built for people who use computers as a tool rather than a computer hobbyist who might know about (and have the courage to) dink with services!

That is a very interesting question to bring. Here's my take : I've worked almost always in overwhelmed start-ups,  crazy workflow, small companies. The guy making the art would often would be also installing systems, helping with purchases, even doing tech support, and acting as webmaster, to name a few. Or that has been just a little chunk of my assigned duties in all the places and what mates had to do, too. Every pro I've worked side by side in these companies would figure absolutely everything out, and/or, ask me for help, or me requesting help or tip to a colleague. It gets so almost instant, solving any issue of the kind. Even more when you get (or force) people to be used to do so, to solve the issues, even if they're WAY out of the worker's field. I don't regret it: Is extremely useful once you become a full time freelance.

About services.  Again, if you work at a company where the team is every once in a while fully gathered to focus, every soul, in testing apps, games, or whatever the product, or in helping the systems installation, designers and other artists end up really knowing their way through system stuff. And well, "Services"... I know what you mean, is not really basic user level. But IMO, is not either making a console script for a server, nor even doing complex user quotas/privileges administration stuff. Is kind of a Windows Home feature that helps you keep efficient . Not just for Wacom, but to avoid to do so many reboots that made Windows so unluckily famous. It avoids a lot of time-outs, so, yup, is a need to know, for pros. In my opinion. Maybe not the case for a large company. Or even also. Have worked at a pair of those, and bureaucracy kills any productivity, sometimes. Often I'd ask my project manager to let me handle it rather than wait that IT support department could attend my issue. The times I was allowed, man, did I save time. So, is convenient in every case, IMO.

On 3/22/2019 at 6:43 PM, casterle said:

There should be no driver collision if things are written properly.

I agree with that, but.... what you're gonna do...the other tablet brands are reported to have driver issues, maybe more.... Also, as mentioned, Windows and most OSes are getting to do a ton of things at a time. Is not like a dedicated use device, like a game console, or some industrial chip that is prepared to do one single only thing. By simple probability, it must lead to more conflicts. And is not like the Windows users have ANY restriction to install any sort of incompatible (or even garbage) stuff that potentially wont play well with other components, or replace/add libraries (9 times out of ten not even being aware of the fact)  making it all unstable with some new bad ones.

Quote

 the issue is that Wacom doesn't fully uninstall their drivers when told to do so

Yep, that happens sometimes... and... shouldn't.

Quote

No user should ever have to manually uninstall anything, let alone a driver!

Then we do not have the same concept of user. Users have been installing / uninstalling stuff since the 90s. Since earlier, indeed. And am talking about regular uses. Professional users, at least, those in production teams... Well, as I was saying, in small companies you can't afford a system dept to baby sit every worker. Also, an artist/designer, etc, who can fine tune his/her system, is super convenient for everyone and the company. Will keep the OS at maximum performance all the time, this meaning extreme cost saves and better income for the company, obviously. Despite the fact of being convenient to have some system person, well versed on it, supporting the company. Now, if we speak about office work, work seats handling MS Office, marketing departments, etc, .... Well, I kind of see there more sense to not requiring these users more than handling very well the specific apps for their task. Often those seats are also pretty similar, can even be rolled back/installed with an imaged back-up, all seats are almost the same, problems can have automated and server based solutions, the users rarely will demand the kind of machine performance needed to model a 4 million polygons model, or a 2 GB press file, or a 8k video edit. They don't have to "extract gold" from the machine, so to speak.

Not caring about uninstalls and neither keeping the system as clean as possible, monitoring extra processes, etc, etc... is a call for problems, specially in a Windows system, that becomes unstable often just by not uninstalling properly stuff. Specially with many apps.

On 3/22/2019 at 6:43 PM, casterle said:

the quality of my little table was quite good and I expect it would have lasted for many years. I just can't deal with the driver issues.

This part is what mostly surprises me, in the case you might have already been able to compare it with an alternative brand, or have some worker that has done so. There's countless cases of people swearing for issues with drivers with the alternatives, consider that detail. I've yet to see a single tablet brand where I had not known a hand full of complaints about drivers matters, and many other issues. Meaning, if you are escaping from driver issues, you are -I hope you get lucky, tho- probably landing in a worse scenario.  Now, that said, it's known that the main brands have improved drivers a lot in last 2 -3 years. but even so, I DON'T expect any alternative brand to have more stable/better drivers than Wacom.... Maybe one only case where I wouldn't be surprised if has really solid drivers : Dell Canvas. Is a deluxe tablet, a wet dream for an illustrator, as is extremely similar in quality and all to a Cintiq 27".  And don't expect to have any serious issue  when you start to pay more for the device. Price (even if crazy high) tends to come in hand with quality, in Wacom. The thing is, you save quite some dollars with Dell Canvas, but is still a premium device of around 1700 $, last time I checked. Same or similar size is like 700 bucks more in Wacom, and could be the case that the Dell drivers are more stable. (but only "could", have no idea, but Dells do really well in for every person I recommend the brand to).

Like desktop space, I can't either agree in it being a show stopper, always that it is proved that any Wacom driver issue can be solved/will get solved by support or by the trillions of solutions floating on internet as it is the industry standard.

Quote

I'm not an expert on drivers by any means, but I once had one of my engineers write one for a client, so I know what's involved.

Detection issues in USB devices is super common, often is bad implementation in the OS ( is not always the driver), when not even cr4ppy hardware...

On 3/23/2019 at 12:52 AM, casterle said:

With luck my new Deco 03 will have more stable drivers. One of the reviews I read mentioned them specifically as being good.

By all what I gathered, that's the heck of a good tablet, in general. Good luck. Is one I have in mind if this XL breaks, as not in the best moment to buy now a Wacom Large or a 22 XP display tablet, both being my preference.

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 years later...
  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/19/2023 at 12:41 PM, Mat-artscreativity said:

hello

can anyone help me? I have been trying to configure my iMac 27" 2017 screen with an xp-pen Artist 24 display... I just can't seem to get it to work properly. would anyone know the exact configuration settings? or at least where I can find them? please - I'm losing my mind!

I don't know much about Macs, or the XP Pen. There's several posts about them, a lot of praise of using them with Affinity apps.

One post I read, stated that you need to make sure all previous drivers are removed, and you install new drivers.

XP Pen Artist

Affinity Photo 2.4..; Affinity Designer 2.4..; Affinity Publisher 2.4..; Affinity2 Beta versions. Affinity Photo,Designer 1.10.6.1605 Win10 Home Version:21H2, Build: 19044.1766: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5820K CPU @ 3.30GHz, 3301 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s);32GB Ram, Nvidia GTX 3070, 3-Internal HDD (1 Crucial MX5000 1TB, 1-Crucial MX5000 500GB, 1-WD 1 TB), 4 External HDD

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.