While the Bamboo tablet works with Windows XP, it really excels when you add it to a computer that runs Vista (all editions except Home Basic) or Apple OS X. It uses the built-in handwriting recognition and pen features of those operating systems to allow you to handwrite or use an on-screen keyboard for input. We tried the basic functionality with Vista Home Premium, and were amazed to find that it did an excellent job of recognizing our writing without any training. You can also go through built-in training to teach Windows Vista to better recognize your handwriting. While this may be beneficial to some, if you have a fairly readable handwriting, you may not even have to worry about it.

Also, when installed on a Vista computer, the press of the first button on the tablet will open the Windows Vista Journal. This program allows you to write anything and save it as a document. You can also highlight words, use different pencils, pens, and markers. You can annotate web pages and do many other impressive things. If you use Office 2007, you can bring all of this functionality right into your Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents.