The MousePen i608 (Retail $99), from Genius, has accomplished something Wacom has not been able to do, and that is to develop an entry-level tablet that performs very well at a budget price.

The MousePen i608 is a 6” x 8” graphic tablet for creative painting, drawing and handwriting. It offers 1024-level pressure sensitivity for all shapes and thickness control to let you easily make handwriting notes and drawings efficiently in e-mail, MSN, documents, or any application program. The MousePen i608 will help you improve your productivity and fun with any professional publishing software by enabling you to draw and illustrate effortlessly. The 6” x 8” working area, with the cordless pen and mouse, is great for Windows and MAC users to write, draw, sketch or sign e-mails.

The tablet features 29 programmable shortcut keys for quick access to Office and Internet functions. You simply use one of those little keys to do things like start a new document, open a document, save, print, exit, cut, copy, paste, undo, open e-mail, go to the Web, go back, go forward, and much more. This pen offers two buttons and 1024-level pressure sensitivity for thickness control during drawing or writing.

You can store the pen in the clip on the top and this makes it easy to take along with you. In addition, the included scroll wheel cordless mouse provides you more convenience when working on the tablet as it is recognized by the tablet as you move it across the surface, making it very convenient when you have multiple tasks to do that are better suited to mouse than pen.