Personally, I’ve got two older Wacom tablets, a huge 12×12 serial UD-1212 that I still use and a more managable — though unusable with a PC — Intuos 6×8 tablet. They are great. You simply cannot hope to be productive with any sort of image editing or digital art without one. If you don’t have a tablet by all means get one. If you can’t afford an Intuos3, you can get by with a 6×8 Graphire3 (or 4×5) with fewer bells and whistles but still miles ahead of any mouse.

Buy the 6×8 Wacom Intuos3 tablet at Amazon.com (or the 4×5, or the 9×12).