Category Archives: Hardware

How to get your Wacom Graphire 4 tablet working in Windows 10

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I’ve been setting up a new PC at home and one of the things I struggled with was getting my Wacom Graphire 4 tablet working. This isn’t a CAD tablet (remember those?); instead, I use its pressure-sensitive stylus for image creation and editing. Press harder and you get more ink. Turn the pen over and you automatically erase instead of drawing. Press the eraser harder and you get more erasing.

I use PaintShop Pro for my image work, by the way, not Photoshop. You can still buy and optionally upgrade PaintShop Pro perpetual licenses, which is how it should be. You’re probably aware that I don’t rent stuff unless there’s no realistic alternative.

According to the Wacom FAQ, I was severely out of luck.

What is the latest driver for the Graphire 3 & 4 (CTE) tablets?
The Graphire 3 & 4 CTE tablets made from 2003-2007 are no longer supported by Wacom and will not work with a current tablet driver. Below are links to the latest drivers available for these tablets.

Windows 8, Windows 7, Vista & XP Download Here
Mac 10.8, 10.7 & 10.6 Download Here

Not one to give up so easily, I tried a variety of drivers for my tablet (model CTE-440). They were either blocked from installation by Windows 10×64, or in the best case scenario failed to provide any functionality other than acting as a basic mouse. The tablet failed to appear as a WinTab device, so I couldn’t configure PaintShop Pro to use its pressure-sensitivity, defeating the object of having the thing in the first place.

So I did what I thought was best and put the tablet out on the verge with the other junk awaiting council collection and investigated a replacement. Not from Wacom, obviously! I don’t want to reward a company for abandoning its products. I was checking out Huion tablets, which are so much cheaper than Wacom’s that it’s probably worth taking a punt and buying one anyway.

But then the stubborn streak in me (have you noticed?) kicked back in and I had one last go. A bit more in-depth Googling led me to this page. This is an old, non-maintained, leftover page from Wacom Europe. Let’s hope it stays there. On that page I found the driver I needed: DRIVER 5.30-3 RC FOR WINDOWS 8, WINDOWS 7, VISTA, AND XP. The direct link to the driver installation executable (cons530-3_int.exe) is:

http://downloadeu.wacom.com/pub/WINDOWS/cons530-3_int.exe

I retrieved my tablet from the junk pile, installed that driver, cleaned off my tablet while my system rebooted, plugged it in and away I went! In PaintShop Pro 2018, the setting is found at File > Preferences > General Program Preferences in the Miscellaneous section.

Wacom’s FAQ gave me a bum steer. Yes, the driver I used isn’t supported in Windows 10 and it isn’t current, but I don’t care. It works just fine and means my perfectly good as-new tablet isn’t landfill. Wacom needs to do better both in terms of supporting its hardware with current drivers and providing more useful information to its customers.

Video – 3Dconnexion fine tuning in BricsCAD and BricsCAD Shape

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The second video in the cad nauseam YouTube channel is more typical than the first in that it’s a tips and tricks video. In this case it only applies to BricsCAD and Shape users, but future videos will provide information for AutoCAD and other DWG-based CAD applications.

Logitech demonstrates the power of the cloud and cops a bloody nose

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I’ve been a pretty satisfied customer of Logitech products for some years. The mice, keyboards, webcams and 3D controllers (branded as 3DConnexion) I’ve used have generally been well designed, well built and long-term software support has usually been very good (with an exception or two). So it’s with some regret that I have to report them as an example of what not to do in customer service.

Logitech recently sent this email to customers of its Harmony Link universal remote control:

This is an important update regarding your Harmony Link. On March 16, 2018,
 
Logitech will discontinue service and support for Harmony Link. Your Harmony Link will no longer function after this date.
 
Although your Harmony Link is no longer under warranty, we are offering you a 35% discount on a new Harmony Hub. Harmony Hub offers app-based remote control features similar to Harmony Link, but with the added benefit of the ability to control many popular connected home devices. To receive your discounted Harmony Hub, go to logitech.com, add Harmony Hub to your cart, and use your personal one-time promotional code […] during checkout.
 
Thank you for being a Logitech customer and we hope you will take advantage of this offer to upgrade to a new Harmony Hub. If you have any questions or concerns about Harmony Link, please email the Harmony customer care team.
 
Regards,
 
Logitech Harmony Team

This isn’t just a matter of no longer supporting an old product (and it’s not that old, anyway – it was still sold directly 2 years ago and old retail stock has been sold until a few months ago). It’s a matter of actively disabling all instances of a product from afar, world-wide.

That’s right, Logitech has demonstrated the (destructive) power of the cloud by using it to remotely kill your perfectly functional device. If it’s out of warranty, send Logitech more money for a newer one. No guarantees on how long it will be before the replacement gets the remote kill-switch treatment.

As you might expect, customers weren’t overjoyed at being treated in this way. Threads popped up on the Logitech forums (where the words “class action lawsuit” were auto-censored), Reddit, Twitter, and as comments on various IT news sites that reported on Logitech’s move.

The supposed reason for Logitech’s decision seemed to make no sense:

We made the business decision to end the support and services of the Harmony Link when the encryption certificate expires in the spring of 2018 – we would be acting irresponsibly by continuing the service knowing its potential/future vulnerability. Our system shows this product, which was last sold by Logitech in fall of 2015, had a small active user base.

Such certificates are commonly purchased and renewed by hardware and software companies for relatively tiny amounts of money. It would have cost Logitech less to renew a certificate than it would to have someone write the explanation about why they weren’t doing it. Very odd. As a business decision, it sucks. It also exposes Logitech management as utterly out of touch with the reality in which their customers live.

In a reaction that should have come as a surprise to nobody (but apparently did to Logitech), pretty much everybody gave the company a major roasting. Many people pointed out that such a move would be considered illegal in their countries (including mine), or at best (for Logitech) it would entitle the customer to a full refund from the retailer. Many people promised to never buy anything from Logitech in particular, and any device capable of being remote-bricked in general.

Once it became apparent that this was a major PR disaster, Logitech did a belated partial U-turn and extended the offer of a free replacement to customers with units that were out of warranty.

“I made a mistake,” head of Logitech Harmony Rory Dooley explains to Wired. “Mea culpa. We’re going to do right by our customers, and do the right thing.”

This reminds me of those politicians who get caught out misusing expenses who then say sorry and offer to pay back the ill-gotten gains, as if that’s enough to get them off the hook. Nope. Too little, too late.

Logitech, you just destroyed a whole bunch of customer trust. How valuable is that to you? How much is it going to cost you in sales? How much will it cost you in marketing to try to regain it? It stands to be a fair bit more than the cost of updating a certificate, I would guess. And you’re still bricking a whole bunch of perfectly functional devices. How is that environmentally responsible?

The idea of any product that can be remote-disabled or even reduced in functionality by anybody should be anathema to all of us. Any product. Not just gadgets. (How’s your internet-reliant juicer going? Oops.) Oven, garage door, fridge, car (Tesla can do this), hardware, firmware, software. Yes, software.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why we don’t do CAD in the cloud. I’ve explained years ago how cloudy CAD adds multiple points of failure. I’m still not wrong about that. One of those additional points of failure is when the vendor decides to stop offering the service. And, of course, the same applies to subscription software, even when it’s not cloudy. The vendor loses interest and you’re left high and dry.

Don’t think it won’t happen. It happens repeatedly and will continue to happen. Don’t be a victim when it does.

Tip – making your 3D controller work sensibly in BricsCAD

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This tip applies to BricsCAD V14 to V18 inclusive, and possibly other versions too.

BricsCAD automatically works with a 3D “mouse” (e.g. 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator controller), and due to the generally excellent performance of BricsCAD in 3D, it works very smoothly and is a real productivity boon for 3D work. If you don’t already have one and you work in 3D, it’s well worth spending a fraction of the money you saved by switching to BricsCAD to get hold of one.

Unfortunately, the way BricsCAD reacts to use of this device fails to lock the horizon by default. This means it does not keep the vertical axis vertical, so unless you have an exceptionally light and skilled touch, you will soon have your model skewed, upside down and/or flopping around all over the place.

OK, this may be a silly default setting, but how do you change it? Read on.

Method 1

Press the left button on your controller. If you’re lucky, you will see the 3dxWare Panel. (I’m not seeing it in V18 so maybe I need a driver update). Use the Button Configuration tab and change it from “All Applications” to “BricsCAD”, then it should show as:

  • L: BricsCAD Default Menu
  • R: Fit

Picking the controller’s left button in BricsCAD after doing this brings up a context menu containing a Lock Horizon option.


Once you turn this on, the controller will work as expected.

Method 2

If you don’t have those options available to you when you pick the controller’s left button and you’re comfortable messing around in the Registry (the usual caveats apply here), you can fix it up.

First close BricsCAD. Now start REGEDIT and search for the 3dMouseMenu section, e.g. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Bricsys\BricsCAD\V18x64\en_US\Profiles\3D Modeling\3dMouseMenu. Under there is a LockHorizon value: change that from 0 to 1. Next time you start BricsCAD, the controller should work as expected. If therre are multiple user profiles, you will need to repeat this process for each profile.

Method 3

If you don’t have rights to use REGEDIT or you don’t feel comfortable doing so, you can achieve the same result by exporting and importing a user profile, with a little bit of text editing inbetween.

  • Close BricsCAD
  • Start the User Profile Manager (e.g. Start > All Programs > Bricsys > BricsCAD V18 (x64) en_US > V18×64 User Profile Manager
  • Choose a user profile and export it
  • Manually edit the resultant .arg using a text editor (e.g. Notepad) and change the appropriate line under 3dMouseMenu to “LockHorizon”=dword:00000001
  • If that section doesn’t exist, add it as follows (ensuring you use the right version information, e.g. V16x64 in place of V18x64):
    [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Bricsys\BricsCAD\V18x64\en_US\Profiles\3D Modeling\3dMouseMenu]
    "Rotate"=dword:00000001
    "PanZoom"=dword:00000001
    "LockHorizon"=dword:00000001
    "RotCenterModeAuto"=dword:00000001
    "RotCenterModeSelected"=dword:00000001
    "Speed"=dword:00000001
    "3dMouseMode"=dword:00000000
    "RotCenterVis"=dword:00000002
  • Import the edited .arg – you’ll have to provide a different name to any existing profile. Don’t worry, you can rename and delete profiles later as required.
  • Set that profile current
  • Start BricsCAD

You can do the same from within BricsCAD using Tools > User Profile Manager, but as you need to restart BricsCAD anyway before the change takes effect, you may as well do the above.

Poll of evil

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I have closed the Which of these is most evil? poll, which had been running from 20 February 2009. It attracted 2,351 voters, each of whom could distribute up to three votes among thirteen (yes, that number was deliberate) candidates. Here are the ranked results:

  1. Satan (36%, 846 Votes)
  2. Microsoft (31%, 721 Votes)
  3. Apple (26%, 614 Votes)
  4. RIAA/IFPI/MPAA (26%, 601 Votes)
  5. Miley Cyrus (23%, 546 Votes)
  6. Autodesk (23%, 536 Votes)
  7. Disney (16%, 382 Votes)
  8. Google (10%, 230 Votes)
  9. Dell (7%, 172 Votes)
  10. The Pirate Bay (6%, 147 Votes)
  11. Sony (6%, 140 Votes)
  12. Steve Johnson (4%, 89 Votes)
  13. Gaahl (3%, 82 Votes)

That top three is not going to shock anyone (except perhaps some fanbois), but are some surprises in the list. For example, more than a quarter of voters were aware enough of the evils of Big Content to be able to decipher the alphabet soup RIAA/IFPI/MPAA choice and select it. More than four times as many people think this litigious pack of demons is voteworthy than think the same about arch enemies The Pirate Bay. That’s not so shocking for those of us with our fingers on the pulse of popular opinion, but I was surprised to see so few people choose Big Content arch-villain Sony. Rootkit, anyone?

For Autodesk, this poll is something of a triumph, with less than a quarter of voters putting the company in the top three. Mind you, Autodesk was faced with some very stiff competition, being very narrowly edged out of fifth place by Miley Cyrus.

Only one in ten of you thought Google was worthy of selection. This is Google, a company that knows more about you than you do. Google, which passes out your information whenever it feels it might gain some strategic advantage from doing so, and really doesn’t care when it violates your privacy. Google, which insists on knowing my phone number before it lets me sign up for its Facebook-copy thing, because it obviously feels it doesn’t already have enough information about me. Google is apparently “do no evil” enough to attract far fewer votes than more sinister recipients such as, say, Disney.

Dell has been on my personal brown list for some years now, since repeatedly sending out fax spam to me and many other Australian businesses. It forced me to deal with its abysmal “customer service” [sic] Indian call centre in order to try to get it stopped. After making me wait for ridiculously long times while passing me round between various clueless, indecipherable people, a manager finally lied to me to get me off the phone. He assured me I would be taken off the list. The Dell fax spam continued until I finally gave up and threw the machine away; rather that than attempt to deal with Dell again.

Prior to this, I had no dealings with Dell and had just assumed it was a reasonably respectable company. It was only after this episode that I learned that Dell is utterly without ethics; my experience was perfectly normal. Indeed, victims of its shonkier practices (illegal bait-and-switch marketing, lying about stock and deliveries, repeatedly sending out “repaired” units that are totally non-functional, etc.) will probably think that I got off very lightly indeed. Dell has never seen a cent from me and never will. I’ve been very happy to pass on my feelings about the company to everyone who has ever asked for my hardware advice, as happens from time to time. 7% or not, Dell can go to Hell.

Finally, it’s official, I am more evil than Gaahl. Who? Gaahl is a Satanic death-grunt vocalist from black metal band Gorgoroth. He has performed in corpse paint on a stage decorated with sheep’s heads on spikes, and blood-splattered naked women hung up on crosses. Gaahl has been convicted of viscious violent assault multiple times, including one occasion where he was alleged to have threatened to drink his victim’s blood. I’m sure my metal friends will be very impressed by me being considered more evil than that. \m/

My first computer

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My first computer was a Dragon 32, which I think I bought in 1982. With a massive 32 kilobytes of RAM and a proper typewriter keyboard, it was quite advanced for a home computer of the time. The Commodore 64 may have had more RAM, but a lot of it was grabbed by its very basic BASIC. I preferred a computer with an ELSE to go with its IF, thanks. Microsoft Extended BASIC for me, not the crummy old BASIC 2.0 of the Commodore. The Commodore 64 was one of the great consumer electronics sales successes of all time. The Dragon, er, wasn’t. It lasted less than two years before the Welsh parent company went under.

Inside, it was pretty much a Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer. Outside, it was this:

Dragon 32

I cut my coding teeth on this beast. The first thing I did with it was to write a parametric 3D bottle design program. I later spent several all-nighters developing what I thought was an awesome space game in BASIC using its limited graphics. I bought a plug-in cartridge that provided me with assembly language facilities. Real nerd stuff.

I sold it to a co-worker just before the company collapsed and replaced it with a Sinclair QL, another great commercial success story. I still have that QL (broken), and another one I bought much later as a replacement. I must get it out one day and see if it still works.

What was your first computer?

Buying 24″ monitors – is now the right time?

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I’m doing my bit to reduce the impact of the global financial crisis. Yesterday, I went out and bought a couple of new 24″ monitors to replace my perfectly functional pair of 19″ LCDs. It now looks like I’m facing a huge wall of pixels and I don’t quite know where to look, but I felt like that after moving from my old 19″ CRT to the pair of 19″ LCDs, so I’m sure I will get used to it soon enough. The 19″ LCDs haven’t gone to waste, they are now adorning an older PC which was previously attached to the old and now slowly-dying 19″ CRT.

Why was it a good time for me to buy new monitors? Because of the way monitor aspect ratios are going. The “sweet spot” for monitors right now is 22″ or 23″, where a serious number of pixels are available for very little cash. Trouble is, the pixels are in the wrong place. Almost all monitors of that size have a resolution of 1920 x 1080, a ratio of 16:9, same as a full HD TV. A vertical resolution of 1080 doesn’t provide a significant advantage over an old 19″ 1280 x 1024 (4:3 ratio) monitor.

When I’m not doing CAD or image manipulation, I’m generally doing things that involve lots of vertical scrolling; word processing, reading web pages, that sort of thing. Often, those web pages have a fixed-width design (e.g. AutoCAD Exchange), so adding extra screen width gains me nothing but extra wide stripes on each side. With more and more software having a deep horizontal stripe dedicated to user interface elements, there’s not much point investing in only 56 extra pixels (5.4%) of height.

From my point of view it’s better to pay a bit extra and go for an extra 176 pixels (17.1%) of height: a 1920 x 1200 (16:10 ratio) monitor. These are available in various sizes, but the cheapest ones, and the ones that will fit side-by-side on my desk, are 24″. But these are becoming less common. Even as I’ve been looking over the past few weeks, the number of 24″ 1920 x 1200 monitor models available in my area has dropped off significantly. Unless you’re very careful, if you buy a 24″ monitor it’s likely to be 1920 x 1080.

Why? Many of these monitors are now being used for games consoles; 1920 x 1080 is all they will use. Same with HD TVs; 16:9 is the current fashion in LCD panel ratios, and it looks likely to stay that way. It makes sense for manufacturers to make 16:9 panels, so 16:10 panels are only going to get rarer.

That may make sense for the manufacturers, but it doesn’t help me as a vertical-pixel-hungry customer. Unless I’m prepared to go for much bigger, desk-hogging and expensive monitors, all I’m going to gain with a 16:9 screen is a bunch of width. Even a 27″ monitor I considered, at roughly twice the price of a 24″, offered “only” 2048 X 1152.

I made the decision. I bought a pair of 24″ 1920 x 1200 monitors while I still could. I found a good-value model I could view in the store, with a small enough bezel (important if you’re using them side by side), a height-adjustable stand, and an excellent warranty (3 years pixel-perfect). For me, it was the right time. Maybe it is for you, too?

Why I won’t buy another Canon all-in-one printer

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Last year, I bought a Canon MP830 printer/scanner/copier/fax/tea maker/whatever for my home office. I chose this particular device because it had all the features I was after, including CD printing, duplex printing, printing to the edge of the sheet, decent photo printing quality, and great document handling including automatic dual-sided copying. It also had theoretical high speed operation and ink economy with 5 separate tanks. It also looked like a sturdy piece of kit that wasn’t going to wobble all over the place in use, and which might stand a chance of lasting a long time. It was at the upper end of the Canon range, but even then it wasn’t expensive.

I was a little worried that when one part of it eventually failed, I would be stuck with a partially functional device, such as a scanner/fax that wouldn’t print, or a printer that wouldn’t scan, and be left with the dilemma of replacing all of it or part of it. But I had good experiences with long-lived printers in the past (albeit Hewlett-Packard ones), so I figured that if I had to throw it away in five years’ time I could live with that.

In practical use, most of the device’s features turned out to be as advertised, and while it was working I was generally happy with it. But I won’t be buying another one, and it’s unlikely that I will ever buy another Canon printer of any description. Why not?

  • Performance. This simply isn’t up to scratch. While it may theoretically print a 500-page document at 30 pages per minute, printing a single page is a different matter. Although it can look spectacularly quick in action, it takes one full minute from turn-on to get itself ready to do anything at all, then about 10 seconds to print a simple monochrome page in draft. There are also long delays when the device is switching from one kind of use to another. The lengthy period of whirs and clunks indicates that it’s doing something very important internally, but I have no idea what. I don’t care. For my typical use, it’s just too slow.
  • Economy. The ink savings promised by the 5-tank system are illusory. This thing eats ink at a rapid rate, so I’m finding that the costs of running this printer are significantly greater than my previous Hewlett-Packard. Having to maintain at least one spare (preferably more, because they don’t last long) of each tank is inconvenient and means there is always an expensive set of tanks lying around waiting to be thrown or given away when the device finally dies. Which, given my experience to date, could be any day now.
  • Reliability. It doesn’t have this. It had to be returned for warranty repairs in its first year, as it complained about its ink tanks. This resulted in the print head being replaced. Out of warranty, it started doing the same thing again. This was sometimes fixable by various means, such as removing and replacing the tanks, switching the device on and off, removing and replacing the print head, cleaning the contacts, prematurely replacing unfinished ink tanks with new ones, and so on. This would sometimes fix the problem on the first or second attempt, but this level of cooperation didn’t last for ever and the condition gradually worsened until the device was officially dead. I took it in for repair but apparently a new print head (which costs 30% as much as the printer) was not required this time. It has been fixed, for now, by replacing one of the half-full tanks with a new one. Apparently, genuine Canon tanks, which are the only thing it has ever had in it, are prone to bad batches, and I’ve been unlucky. The little chip on each tank, which is intended to make life difficult for makers of third-party tanks, has been making my life difficult instead.
  • Idiotic design. This is the killer. You may recall my concern that I would be left with a partially functioning device when one part failed. I need not have worried about that, because it seems the Canon design philosophy is one of extreme built-in obsolescence. When one part fails, even if it’s just an ink tank, the whole machine is a boat anchor. When the magenta ink tank is faulty, that doesn’t mean your prints come out looking rather less pink than they should. It doesn’t mean that you are restricted to monochrome prints. It doesn’t mean that you can’t do any printing at all. It means that the device is completely, absolutely, 100% useless. You may think that it should be possible to print in monochrome, scan a page, or send a fax without a cooperative magenta ink tank, but the Canon designers apparently think otherwise. What on earth were they thinking? I mean, how could anybody possibly think this is an appropriate design decision? Strewth!

Canon, this device is not good enough. I know that one person’s reliability experiences are not statistically significant, but even without that, the other downsides are enough to make me not want to repeat this unpleasant buying experience.

I have had very long life, 100% reliability and relative economy out of Hewlett-Packard devices in the past, so it looks like I’ll be returning to the fold with my next purchase. I know that HP doesn’t quite have the exalted quality reputation it once enjoyed, but it surely can’t be as bad as this. Can it?