Installing Wacom Bamboo Pen and Touch on OS X using ARD Apple Remote Desktop error

It's a long story, but I'll cut it short. Anyhow, I have 12 x Wacom Bamboo Pen and Touch model number CTH-470 and they need installing on all Mac Computers. No problem, except the installer looks like an .app file. If you view the package contents you find a couple of pkg files. The most important is the "Install Bamboo.pkg".

Running this installer locally installs the tablet minus the dock (I don't think it's important). So, next thing is to try via Apple Remote Desktop (ARD). This ends up coming up with an error:

"Install Bamboo.pkg" could not be installed. Error message: "running package scripts..."

Well, just like the last time I tried to install Wacom tablets through ARD, turns out this error message isn't really an error message. After a reboot the tablet works like a dream on the computer.

Hope this helps someone.

Installing Wacom Intuos 4 drivers through Apple Remote Desktop

A student brought in his Wacom Intuos 4 graphics tablet which I promptly installed on one of the computers, using the provided CD. They do all have Bamboo drivers, but it is slightly different for Intuos 4. I promptly found the .pkg file on the disk, which is in the "Program Files" folder on the CD.

I put this in Apple Remote Desktop for install and tested it on another mac. It came up with an error:
Error message: "Running Package Scripts..."

the "..." assumes that this might just be the extra little bits at the end of the installation. On looking on the computer it appeared to have installed the preference pane so I was pretty happy. Not sure what these extra "scripts" are but they might be for just removing files and such, hopefully nothing too important.

I later ran the install through the task server, to install on all in the computer suite. I expected the error which actually came up as:
Completed but failed on one package: "Install Wacom Tablet"

Anyway, I shall have a proper look later to see if it's worked as expected.

Wacom Bamboo pen not working

I've just tried to use a Bamboo tablet in Windows XP and only the 'Rubber' end of the pen seems to work. This suggests either something is wrong with the 'nib' end of the pen, or something wrong with the installation of the software (drivers).

The easiest thing to do was to have a look at the installation, and the preferences for the device. So, under Start > Programs > Bamboo > there were two preference shortcuts. I loaded up the basic one, fiddled with it but no solutions. The other preference shortcut let you have two choices:

1. Delete preferences for the user
2. Delete preferences for all users

Having seen this option my initial conclusion was that a lot of users have some problems with the preferences, and hence the need for these options. It was quite convincing that this might be related to my problems and so I went for option 2! Alas, pointless. These options also point to poorly made software. Users should not have to deal with these sort of problems!

My next thing to do would be to rule out the drivers by trying it on a machine that it used to work on (mac OS X) but the staff member was too busy so I thought I could look up anyone else who might have the same problem.

I found one particular person with a very nicely written blog post! He refers inspiration from this post. He had the exact symptoms as described above and found the problem lay with a broken electromagnet inside the nib end of the pen. He then goes into the particulars of fixing it. There are also a lot of comments below of thankful users.

I shall try the tablet on a machine which it definitely worked on before, and if the symptoms persist, I shall refer back to this article.