Maybe it’s because I’m tired, but I don’t see the question here!!
Hang on, I’m off to the computer store to buy a bigger monitor in case I missed it. brb.
Photoshop is good. Painter better and is tons of fun (it emulates natural media). I’m a mouse-user when it comes to Illustrator though – I’m usually tweaking shapes to fit over top of scanned art work so a tablet generally slows me down there but they are useful for adding lots of repetitive semi-random shapes like grass.. If you’re in to 3D, I’ve heard that ZBrush is stupid fun with a tablet – I’m anxious to try it myself.
Painter is awesome. For quick doodles I like alias sketchbook. If you’re on a budget, then pixelmator is sweet (although it is Mac only). If you’re super tight on a budget (or you just don’t know where to get the warez) gimp is great too.