A couple of months ago my friend Max bought a Wacom tablet for his Macbook in a shop in London. Once he got home and began using it Max noticed that the tablet kept freezing up and was intermittently unresponsive. Plugging it out and in again helped for a minute but the problem persisted. He told me about it but before I could take a look he’d already made his way to the store and got a replacement.

Much to my surprise he contacted me the following day to report another dud tablet. The second tablet displayed exactly the same symptoms. Too much of a coincidence I thought and made my way to his place. After fifteen minutes of routine troubleshooting I had made no progress. But then as I looked away from his Macbook and at his table a sudden flashback enticed a eureka moment.

“His table is made of metal!”, I thought. “That’s it!”

Remembering how the trackpad on my Powerbook G4 had become similarly unresponsive when I had used it on a metal surface a couple of years back (I got around this by placing several magazines underneath the laptop), I advised Max to try using his Wacom on a different surface. Lo and behold it worked fine on his wooden kitchen table and fine when he separated the tablet from the metal table with a shoebox.

I’m no physicist but I’m sure there’s a simple explanation for this phenomenon. Please leave a comment if you know the science of it.

Anyway this behavior is not limited to Wacom tablets, but as I’ve already said Powerbooks and probably Macbook Pros too.

- Child Har0ld