Windows Ink is probably the "feature" I hate the most in the Windows OS. It is such garbage. Microsoft needs to either get rid of it or only bundle it in with their Surface products. I have a Wacom Intuos tablet connected to my big Alienware notebook at home and I have to leave Windows Ink disabled in the tablet properties. That means living without any pressure sensitive functions in the pen. If I want pressure sensitive functions in a pen-like device I'll whip out the Apple iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. At least that's one setup that works properly.
Every once in awhile I'll try enabling Windows Ink in the Wacom tablet properties. It doesn't take more than a couple minutes of computer use to remember why the setting stays turned off 99.99% of the time. When Windows Ink is enabled any click-drag behaviors using the Wacom pen are 100% disabled. Instead, this little animated circle thing happens on the screen and nothing else. Apparently it's supposed to act as some kind of right-click behavior (despite the Wacom pen having two mouse buttons on its side). I often click-drag the pen tip for animated zoom functions in Adobe Illustrator. I have to click-drag the pen tip to move user interface elements such as the little slider buttons for individual CMYK ink colors or opacity levels on a layer in Photoshop. With Windows Ink enabled I cannot click-drag the pen tip to select a string of text. When I try click-dragging the pen tip into the address bar on a web browser I just see this blue tear drop icon and can't do anything with it. It looks like the same blue tear drop text selection thing on my smart phone. And that's the real problem with Windows Ink: some sales people at Microsoft think everyone needs to use their PCs like a stupid phone. It's bad enough I can't select the text in a web browser address bar, but Windows Ink won't even let me move the browser window!
Another "feature" that will make users want to tear out their hair: when you want to start writing a line of text this dopey handwriting window is bound to pop up in the way of your work. It's not very easy to disable this stupid feature. My computer is not an Apple Newton. It has a keyboard attached. I can type text about 10,000 times faster than I can write it by hand. But, no, Microsoft's development team wants to me to write all that stuff by hand and let Windows recognize it. Derpy derpy derp!
Windows Ink been a severely aggravating issue FOR YEARS. Wacom and Microsoft have done nothing about it. I can't understand how they could let such poorly designed, poorly behaving software be released. Any amount of beta testing would expose the problems. Wacom's forums have hundreds of complaints about the aggravating animated circle icon. I have dug deep into Windows' OS settings to try disabling some of the baffling stupid "features" of Windows Ink to allow the Wacom graphics tablet to function normally. NOTHING WORKS!
I've been a PC guy for many years. But when it comes to using a pressure sensitive graphics tablet connected to a traditional desktop computer or notebook I have to strongly recommend NOT using a Windows-based PC for that. A Mac-based system or an iPad with an Apple Pencil is a vastly superior alternative, at least in this specific category.
I've repeated this complaint about Windows Ink and how it ruins the functions of graphic tablets a few other times in this forum, and I'll probably continue repeating it further in other places as well. The growing number of complaints are easily visible in web searches about Windows Ink and graphics tablets. Hopefully the software developers involved in this very stupid, on-going situation will wake up and notice the large number of complaints and finally fix the freaking problem.
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