Found these options after having a play around tonight, the monitor mapping one's the most interesting.

 

So if you map the tablet to the screen, does a tap/contact with the stylus move the pointer to that spot, then a mouse click would be a button on the stylus?

or is the stylus tip a button?

Aye, that's right.

There's a rocker style switch on the pen which can do a whole host of things (2nd pic attached here)

That's the thing I lost.  :-((

Those pens aren't cheap either, if you can even find them.

Think you kind of hover with teh stylus to move the mouse, contact is equivalent to left click. So contact + movement = left click plus movement (ie drag, paint, eraser etc.)

What Kos said, I was getting the wrong end of the stick there.

But you can take the stylus away from the tablet and put it down at another spot and the cursor will appear at that point on your screen, you can also hover and move it too. The distance it's effective over is around 0.5cm.

Been scouring ebay, but the medium ones seem rare second hand and expensive new. Don't want a small one again is it just didn't satisfy my needs last time.

Have you got the eBay phone app? Get a saved search on there and get it to notify you when new items are listed. It saves on the scouring.

I have a small one, but it still gets the job done.

 

YJ, YJ.

Having worked with both, gotta say I prefer the small one as it's more portable and just seems faster as a mouse replacement (you can literally take the cursor across two spanned displays with the flick of a wrist).

OTOH the medium is probably better for /drawing/ (which I don't use it for).

Ever tried playing a game with it?

Just thought it might be suited to RTS games.

Nah, I doubt it would be much good in games, at least not the ones I like to play. Ever used a joystick with an FPS? It's really good!

I do. Problem is there are a squillion model numbers, and a lot are just listed as "wacom tablet".

Got my eye on a couple of intuous 4 mediums that look to be going around the 60 mark..

Absolutely, John.

Heh, yes, I played Doom with a joystick on a PC. And again with a joypad on the Saturn. :C

When I was introduced to PC gaming proper, I wondered how the hell a mouse and keyboard could be better than a pad.  :-$

Ah bugger, and if you're any more specific you're going to miss out on that Intuos 5 some clueless person's listed for £0.99.

I'm seriously tempted by this.

Can't afford it or justify spending that much. Shitty video. Nevertheless...

iirc there is/was a wacom ballpoint pen-based stylus so you can put paper on the tablet and draw+digitize.

They did the 'inkling' but it wasn't generally well received: a bit inaccurate and more for fun than a professional product. I suppose the fact that they've abandoned it is significant. 

Actually, since yesterday I've read a couple of early reviews of the Iskn Slate 2 and it looks disappointing too. No pressure sensitivity, translating speed of movement into line thickness (work hard to produce a product that feels natural to use and then deliberately build in an artificial and unnatural effect??) hit and miss response etc. etc. Worst of all, a couple of reviewers included photos of drawings compared to what the slate 2 captured. Not impressed.

New business idea:

Buy second hand intuos 4 tablets for around £80

Sell the pens on ebay for £75
Sell the tablets sans pen for £35
???
Profit!