Thinkpads Forum

I've had my x60 tablet for a few months now, and really like using the East Asian character hand writing recognition.

My mother, seeing this, also wants to enjoy the convenience of being able to hand write in Chinese, since her typing isn't all that great. So after a little research, it looks like besides shelling out $1000+ to get her a tablet as well, the most economical option would be to get her a USB graphics tablet, the kind you use for photoshop. I think the kind I'm looking for would probably be the cheapest, since it doesn't even need to have pressure sensitivity.

So two parts to my question...

1. what kinda graphics tablet should I get for her(I'm hoping for under $50)

2. After I get it, what softwares can support the East Asian character input that can properly interface with the graphics tablet? I really like the interface on the tablet version of XP. Is it possible to install that onto a standard corporate build of XP Pro? I played around with the different Chinese input methods that came with XP Pro, and only found this one feature that allows "hand writing", but it's only one box and you have to manually choose the character after "drawing it out", where as XP tablet allows you to write in a continuous line, recognizing the characters individually on the fly.

anyone with experience on this subject?
any help would be appreciated!!!

A company called Twinbridge used to -- and still does -- sell a product for this. I haven't used it for a long time, since East Asian support in Windows became decent (post-98). They sold it bundled with a cheapo tablet that worked okay. It seems that they still do, but I can't vouch for its quality.
http://www.twinbridge.com/

The software was made by these folks:
http://www.penpowerchinese.com/