Electro-Magnetic Resonance Technology

The Intuos3 requires no batteries or magnets. Wacom developed and has patented Electro-magnetic Resonance technology. This technology (EMR) has recently been renamed to Penabled^®, but both are exactly the same. What this technology does, is allow signals from the tablet to communicate with the pen (and other Penabled devices) and the pen to communicate with the tablet. This all happens in terms of microseconds--20µSEC actually. That's 20/1000000, not 20/1000, which would be milliseconds (ms). All this communication happens in millionths of a second, so you can see why the tablets are so responsive. The pen is a very sophisticated piece of technology which works in tandom with the tablet's sensor board, providing the user with 1,024 levels of pressure. The pen itself is the reason for the 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity. This is because Wacom totally re-designed the pen in terms of capacitive change versus the older inductive change. Wacom's new highly sensitive pen is made from a special proprietary element called the "C-Switch". What happens, is the pen has the power (or shall we say...capacity) to alter the resonating frequency, enabling its wider spectrum of pressure sensitivity. This also allows for other features of the pen, such as the erasor and side-switch.

The Magic Five

There are five ingredients of data which make the pen and tablet so accurate:

• X-Coordinate Data
• Y-Coordinate Data
• Z-Coordinate Data
• Pressure Data
• Tilt Data