I traded a double-bass pedal from my old drumset for a 9" Wacom Intuos 3...Its quite awesome, I agree with the minor inconvenience of having to plug it in occasionally and laziness preventing me from doing so sometimes...But when I REALLY need it its there for me and it helps...layout your desk properly switching from tablet to mouse for menu work isn't that big of a deal though...and remember the tablet often comes with a mouse that works on its surface you can quickly swap to.

I've never had a problem with tips personally, but I'm not very heavy handed, and the Intuos line comes with extras and multiple types...you can also buy replacements anyways.

The Intuos lines have a quick scroller that I use for zooming with a slide of the finger...it also has buttons that represent shift, alt, ctrl, and space...which makes a lot of photoshop functions pretty easy.

You can map the drawing area to portions of your screen so if you want to maximize yoru drawing space thats easy too. Overall I guarantee you that the benefits will FAR outweigh any drawbacks, and yes Wacom is THE only tablet to buy. I have a 12" at work and love it.