I've been using tablets for the past 5 years and I'd strongly recommend it. I used it with 2d software and am yet to use it with Maya, but it can be set up for 3 buttons (tip = right click, middle = left, top = middle)...


Pros:

-If you ever get to work 40+ h a week with a mouse, the chances are that you will develop carpal tunnel syndrome and that never really heals... You don't have to worry about that with a tablet and it's very easy to use, after a day it becomes second nature, I use it for everything (and it's faster than mouse).

-It's invaluable for drawing (unless you can afford a cintiq).

Cons:

- It's not ideal if you have a two-monitors setup. Then the are of the tablet e.g. 6x8 covers 2 wide-screens, so everything you draw is stretched, e.i,: a perfect circle on tablet becomes on oval on the screen. At first it's very award, but you can get used to it.

- You can't play games with it, if that matters to you.

---

I have an older Graphier 4 and bamboo CTH661 and I'd recommend bamboo... It's as professional as you can get and has a nice paper-like texture to it, plus it's inexpensive. I used the big Intuos at work and it's the same thing, the only difference being couple more programmable buttons on the tablet which you never get to use anyway.

---

Between tablet and Inkling I'd go for the tablet 100%. Inkling is cool, but it's more of a toy... You can always draw on paper and scan it. The advantage of Inkling is the alpha channel, so you don't have to clean and separate the lines as you would with the scan. Plus it's only good for concepts. Though it's cool to draw "digitally" away from computer for once