Day: May 30, 2011

For drawing I sometimes use a Wacom tablet. After I installed Windows 7, concentric circles began appearing on the screen whenever the pen touched the tablet--like little animated pond ripples. Yuck. Besides looking horrible, it was incredibly distracting if you were trying to draw, and even slowed down the rendering speed of brush movements!

On a European Wacom forum I learned that the ripples are a Windows, um, innovation called "pen feedback." There is no equivalent effect for the mouse--just pens. The only way to turn them off is with preferences buried deep in the OS. One user suggested the following:

Type "gpedit" in the command line window and press enter. Now, at the new window that opens, navigate to
User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Tablet PC > Cursor.

Now enable the Turn off pen feedback setting.

If this doesn't work for you there are other settings in the tablet pc folder you can deactivate. [Not that I could find - TM]

Done, this way you deactivate the annoying circles without losing the other windows tablet features =) [Not that you want any of those features - TM]

I can now draw again! This is a perfect example of where a software designer/engineer who is obviously not an artist steps all over users to add bells and whistles justifying your expensive upgrade.