Drawing with this stylus, however, feels much like drawing with chalk--it's certainly not comfortable for any sort of long-form illustration, but I actually found it to be a decent tool for detail work. Whether that's just the stylus's smaller form-factor fooling my brain into thinking I'm working more precisely, or the way you can angle it along the screen, I can't say, but it wouldn't be bad as a secondary illustration tool.

The Logiix Stylus Pro Jr is a nicely crafted micro-stylus for navigation and illustration-detail work, though it lacks the comfort and stability for long-term sketching or writing.

Another of the non-traditional options, the ( Macworld rated 3.5 out of 5 mice ; $38) is made entirely of metal--aluminum, titanium, and steel, to be precise--and interacts with your device's touchscreen using a small washer-like O-ring lined with vinyl film. Unlike its pudgy-rubber-nibbed cousins, this stylus theoretically lets you see, through the hole in the middle of its ring, exactly the point on the screen you're interacting with.

So, does it work? Sometimes. Due to the way the iPad's screen is built, the O is most accurate in the center of the screen: as you veer away, any line you draw tends to arc towards the upper lip of the O. Additionally, the lag time for quick strokes is almost painful, even on the faster iPad 2. If you're drawing on a large scale, or zoomed in on your canvas, you can anticipate the lag and still make clean lines, but if you're trying to work on smaller pieces, or while zoomed out, the stylus quickly becomes unusable. Writing, too, suffers from lag, and I often found myself writing letters off-angle as a result.