Ooooh I love my Wacom to death! ♥

When I first tried working with a tablet of a friend I failed miserably as well, but once you grasp the concept it's so much fun to work with!

I use mine not only for drawing/retouching but also for vectors and, well, everything else. :)

I have a Wacom Graphire Wireless, which cost around 350 Euros when I bought it but now costs only 250 Euros.
The active area is around A5, which can be a bit small, but you get used to it.

I just think one would be better off with a Graphire4 instead of a Graphire Wireless. Because I sometimes have problems with the Bluetooth, where my PC doesn't recognize my tablet or my tablet doesn't recognize my PC, which can really be rather annoying. I also had to reinstall the driver two times already.
But if you don't mind that, not having to bother with a cable is awesome. The battery lasts, like, forever, so you don't even have to take a power cable with you when you want to travel with it.

*grins* I've used one once and I had lots of trouble. But I guess the one I used was really bad.

We had some tsuff shown to use, and using it with vectors looked really aesome. And I definately don't want to use a wireless.

250 euros is manageeable I think.

A Graphire 4 XL has the same size of the Wireless one (and the same sensitivity, just a slightly lower resolution) and only costs 200 Euros. So if you don't want to use a wireless, that would be the way to go.

Of course the Intuos series has better quality, I initially wanted to buy an Intuous, but it was just too expensive for me. :/
Depends really on how much you want to spend...

But so far the detail and sensitivity of my Graphire was more than I needed, so all is well. ;)