By Staff Writer – John Federico (@gadgetboy)

At the end of last week our gadget guy, John Federico,  picked up a Wacom Bamboo Pen and Touch tablet. He wrote a short piece describing the device and is preparing a follow up piece on it this week.

I couldn’t help but use his post as an impetus to return to my roots of design and go out and pick up a tablet myself.

Though I would love to have the touch I thought it would suit me best to get something that I knew I could be happy with, pen only. I did it up and feel like I’m 25 again computing with a purpose.

If you’ve never used a pen as an input for a computer then you won’t understand much of this. The pen is mightier than the mouse and will shred any work flow thrown at it. Every action with a pen input device is quicker.

Of course you have to learn how to use it first. This can take some time to get used to the required tablets are a fixed version of your screen. Meaning that the every position on the table corresponds to a Cartesian coordinate on the monitor. The pen and tablet know your X and Y at all times and it is static – unlike  a mouse that is loosey goosey (that is a technical term used in the biz).

All of this of course got me to thinking about alternative input devices for computers and got me stuck on pens. Why aren’t their any simple pen shaped mice, sans tablet?

I hit the internets and found that there are a few. Most of them are ugly sticks that aren’t very much like a pen at all. They lack a refined vision to make a simple pen like input device and rely on “ergonomic design” to create sculpted shapes – think CueCat but vertical.

After some more time I came across the Pen and Mouse (P&M) from a Korean company called IVS. They come in two wireless varieties, a 2.4 GHz via a USB dongle and a Blue Tooth version. I’ve only found them for sale on eBay and most of them on eBay UK. Pricing is around $75 for both types.

I am hesitant to drop the money on one without knowing how it will perform. But as far as form factor and input style it looks like a very appealing alternative to tablet input devices. And it is something that can be used when out of the office just like a normal mouse.

So thank you Bamboo for inspiring me to think about human computer interaction and so much so that I wrote this post about it.

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Tags: bamboo , eBay UK , Input device , IVS , IVS Korea , John Federico , P&M , Pen and Mous , pen computing , pen input , pen mouse , Universal Serial Bus , Wacom , Wacom Bamboo Pen , wireless pen input