I'm not Gortef, but my recommendation is a Wacom tablet. Get one of the refurbished Intuos series tablets if you don't have all that much lump cash - the Intuos2's in any decent size are hell expensive. Or try ebay, see if you can pick one up there.
Personally, since I don't even have the cash to get a refurbished one, I've got myself a Nisis graphics tablet. For something like £60-80 (I can't remember), it's an A4 tablet with a pretty damn decent resolution, and as many pressure sensitivity levels as one of the Intuos tablets. And it's all cool and shiny, as well as having both pen and mouse to use on the surface (like the intuos tablets). Also like Intuos and Intuos2 tablets, it has a clear top surface that you can slide stuff under, say if you want to trace it. And finally, both tablets have little strips at the top which act as menu bars. I use this quite a lot on my Nisis, as it's programmable.
However, of course, it is cheap, and there have got to be problems:
- The mouse you get that you can use on the tablet is kinda hard to hold for someone like me with big hands. If you have smaller hands you might be okay with it.
- Both the mouse and pen require a single AAA battery each, making them kinda heavier than their Wacom counterparts, who somehow got away without batteries. I use rechargable alkalines for this, as it's useful to keep them charged up - see the next point.
- If your batteries run fairly low (takes a while, especially if you remove them between uses), tracking goes a little iffy, especially when the pen or mouse is lifted off the surface. Usually you can lift it a few centimetres and still get a response, but if you try that with low batteries it jumps around a bit instead of being smooth.
- It's probably just my hands being a little shaky, but smooth curves are hard to keep smooth. I emphasise that it's probably my hands and the fact that the emitter in the pen is slightly elevated above the tip, so if the pen is angled slightly then there is a small movement. I expect this problem exists with all tablets, unless Wacom's no-battery system involves some kind of radio-reflective nib, which I doubt as the nibs are interchangable between different types of pen that are used on the surface, and the fact it, like my nisis, has a few buttons on the pen. Oh, and the Wacom pens have an 'eraser tip', so you can flip the pen over and erase stuff on the screen - don't try that with the Nisis one, it's just a bit of plastic at the end and you'd scratch the tablet ^_^
Hope this helps...
