Moral Lesson: Don’t judge a tool until you have tried it yourself… you might be in for a surprise… especially a CDR-King product

Now to get your attention. What you see below is the result of an unplanned one hour of sketching using a really REALLY cheap CDR-King Tablet.

A long time ago, I was having a conversation with a Lemmasoft forum member named LordcloudX. During that conversation I am hell bent on winning my argument that CDR-King products are CRAP!… In case you didn’t know… CDR-King is one of the largest retailer of Computer parts and accessories in the Philippines. Their products had some of the LOWEST prices in the market made possible by cheap re-branded Chinese imports… and they also break easily… I know very well for I have tried their routers… none of them lasted longer than 6 months.

Earlier today, I visited a long time friend from when I was still working as a freehand illustrator since his house happened to be along my planned route. So we chat a bit and learned that like me… he too retired from being a graphic artist. He is now working for Telus as a Callcenter agent to support his now growing family. Of course, once an artist, always an artist and the same can be said for both of us. I still draw during my spare time and so is he… but the real highlight of this visit is that GOD DAMN CDR-KING TABLET sitting in front of his computer… so I looked at him dead straight and asked him… why CDR-King?… Those things are cheap crap and breaks easily… He answered “It’s Cheap”

Now it’s one of those unwritten rule that when it comes to tablets you’ve got to have WACOM. Wacom is simply the best and in my case, I made effort to acquire a refurbished Cintiq and like every Cintiq user has to say… you’ll never EVER wanna use another tablet other than CINTIQ… so here is a cheap Php1380.00 (US$31.56) tablet with it’s large CDR-King logo staring at me, mocking me, challenging me, enticing me to try it. Modesty tossed aside, I am quite confident in my drawing skills and my curiosity got the better of me… I’m so curious how this crap will perform in the hands of someone like me. So I asked my good old friend to fire up his PC so I can test drive his CDR-King Tablet.

While I was drawing, I found out that the pen needed a battery to properly operate…pfft… but as I started my first stroke I was surprised at how accurate CDR-King tablet is. It’s so accurate, it’s so smooth, it performs just like an Intuos… probably even better… Now before I sing CDR-King praises… I have to tell that maybe I was in a rather good mood for drawing that day and may be a factor but damn… if you removed this ugly CDR-King Logo… I probably won’t be able to tell the difference between this and a Wacom. About 10 minutes I was happy at the results of the initial sketch that I proceeded to ink it and eventually color it. The end result is so nice I copied it into my USB drive to brag about it here and in my blog…

So there you have it… I still don’t trust CDR-King too much especially every time I recall my routers but damn… maybe if they sell more products like this who knows… maybe I too will start coming back to their stores and maybe even get myself one of these.

OK Cloud… you can go ahead and sing that “I was right and you were wrong song…” time to give CDR-King some Thumbs Up…

“POOF” (Disappears)

Edit: Wow!… I didn’t know those things are selling like hotcakes… the two CDR-Kings I went to were all sold out…