Setting Up The Volito

The Volito comes with a USB interface so all you need to do is plug it into your Windows XP machine and it will be detected automatically. Of course, my laptop only came with Windows 2000 SP 4 but it's basically the same. Plugged it in and the operating system detected it as a USB input device. Within a few seconds, I’m in business!

Windows 2000 treated it just like any other pointing device, even in stylus mode. So, it actually felt more like an oversized touch pad which was pretty hard and awkward to control. But once I installed the driver, the stylus started working in absolute positioning mode.

For those who don’t know what is absolute positioning, the whole active area on the tablet will represent your screen in absolute positioning. So, the position and movement of the stylus on the tablet is reflected exactly by your cursor. Let's say you want your cursor at the bottom left corner of your screen. All you need to do is touch the stylus on the upper right corner of the tablet and the cursor will instantly jump to the position. You get the idea, right?

At present, Wacom only offers official Volito drivers for Windows 98 and above. But Linux fans do not need to worry, I only said no "official" drivers, not no drivers at all! This is because Wacom unofficially supports an open source project to run Wacom’s products on Linux systems. You can check it out here!

Configuring The Volito Driver

The tablet's properties screen is way too simple. I expected more than just a couple of slider bars, a combo box and two radio buttons.

For example, the stylus has 512 pressure levels but all they allow are just seven selectable levels! The softer settings increase the stylus tip's sensitivity while firmer settings decrease the tip's sensitivity.

The double-click distance setting is utterly useless to me because no matter which setting I select, I just can’t get the double-clicking feature to work! You can also set the programmable side switch to work as a right-click or double-click or even execute custom keystrokes. There is also a setting for the type of tracking you prefer. You can select to use either the absolute mode or the relative mode (alternatively described as the stylus or mouse modes).

The mouse properties page is basically what you would expect for most mice out there. The only difference is you can set the tracking type to either absolute mode or relative mode.

That is all you can customize. Quite unlike Wacom's higher-end products, where there is a graph that allows you to set the pressure level in a curve and more. In addition, the Volito lacks the ability to set different custom settings for individual applications. This feature is only found in Wacom's higher-end products.