Don't wait for christmas!
Buy it used

Tablets are not the holy grail.
You will still have to paint by yourself

They won't break. Maybe some new tips.
Hmm, how to get this into topic......Mike the whole reasonable tablet UNIVERSE is unfortunately in wacoms hand.
I think, the older the products, the more solid they were build.
I have two Intuos 2, one A4 (bought used 8-9 years ago, with an extra pen which is itself 80 Euros for 180) and one A5 bought new somehow ten years ago.
They still work like a charm, but - wacom stopped their driver support.
I bought a cinitq 21UX around 5 years ago.
Used for 900 Euros. Lovely piece to work with.
Big, hot and heavy and with 1600x1200 a little bit small resolution. but haptic sensation.
You only need some passion on eb** or where ever.
The Cintiq has Intuos 3 technology.
Starting with Intuos 4 they introduced the 2048 pen pressure levels. After they released Intuos 5 and now it's just Intuos (consumer) intuos pro.
Due to my loved intuos 2 A5 is not supported anymore, I bought a Intuos pro S for traveling with my laptop.
Size is fine for me. (especially for travelling) but my experience with my A4 was, that control is a bit better but drawing ways are much longer.
That's a matter of taste.
In fact - 1024 more pressure levels are not an evolutionary step on land, it's more a tiny little extra fin for the fish.
Touch is "Quatsch" as we say in Germany. Far away from iphone haptic and experience.
As a conclusion: Mike, get the hole universe of digital drawing to you place! As soon as possible!! You don't need the newest tech. your skills won't be reduced by an intuos 3 i.e. As taron uses

Sometimes I use my intuos pro to draw on bigger resolution, you would not see any differences.
One thing is a step further, that's a cintiq tablet monitor in 21" or better 24".
But hell! Who is doing prizes at wacom??
I was told, that the 12" first small versions were crap. I don't know.
I only know that I love my old boy here.
There I never care for longer ways to draw. It's a big step for better control.........but still with a pencil.....?? One have to get used to.
A tablet needs a little time to get over first frustrations regarding a leck between expectation and reality.
But Mike, i think that is not your problem, your problem is this:
http://forum.deviantart.com/technology/hardware/1294488/
