I love the bamboo wacom. Its easy to use and is really light.
Often when plugged in it doesn't like to work, the orange light goes on. But its easily fixed by restarting the computer. It doesn't happen too often.
My biggest problem with it is the nibs wear down fast. But that is mostly because I am unable to control my hand pressure and it wears them down fast.
The bamboo touch and pen was hundred bucks in store at Best Buy and it came with Photoshop Elements and some other program. I'm not sure what they come with now, but its bound to be a good deal none the less.
Wacom also has great customer service.

Wacom all the way, they are just so damn reliable and hardy, plus Wacom pen stylus's have this weird unique technology of their own where the stylus doesn't use batteries. Other tablets use batteries in their stylus's imagine how much it would suck to have to draw with a pen with 2 AAA batteries shoved into the top, Id say it'd through strokes off a bit from the weight.

Wacom is the way to go. I've had two of their tablets so far, a Graphire3 and now an Intuos4. My Graphire3 lasted 7 years before the cord got pinched and it didn't want to work anymore.

Wacom, of course... although their new drivers don't work very well. I have an Intuos (first version) and I'm still using the old driver from 2004 because it works the best on my system.

Wacom bamboo. No other company.

Wacom is expensive, but bullet proof in terms of usages.

I however use Huion, because you can get them for $50 bucks on Amazon (also known as Turcom and Monoprice). It has some errors, and some waviness in straight lines, but it's cheap and it works mostly. I did the Blaine Gloriosus piece using it.

Coincidentally, Monoprice is the one I ended up getting too! And yeah it was a decent price, and more than good enough for the kinds of pictures I draw with it. I definitely didn't want to plunk down hundreds of $$$ for a tablet before I even knew how to use one :'I
Blaine Gloriosus was a great piece, so it just proves that an artist doesn't need the fastest & fanciest gimmick to get ace results; skill is what's really important!

No, just a lot of patience, and zooming in and out a lot. XD.