I'm very keen to lay my greedy little hands on one of these wacom thingummies everyone is chatting about,

But... I'm in China and amazon.cn has a pitifully small range in stock, only the more expensive ones, and my Chinese is no way good enough to find out if/when that is likely to change. Amazon.com/co.uk can't ship electronics to China (I assume its the same for others).

The skritter recommended 'bamboo pen only CTL460' sounds about right for my needs; does anyone know where I can order one from online thats in china, or will ship to china and not charge me excessively for it?

Depends where you live. I live in Wuhan, and I went to my local computer city to get mine. It's the Bamboo Pen (small), and I paid 430 with minimal bargaining. Any major city should have at least one or two computer megastores like this where you could get a Wacom tablet, or a cheaper off-brand drawing tablet. Beware, though - most Chinese brand 写字板 don't work properly with Skritter - you need a drawing tablet, not a writing tablet. If it's not Wacom, be sure to test it out on Skritter before buying.

Another source would be taobao - the 'Chinese eBay' - you can get just about anything that's readily available in China (and tons of things that aren't) there for a competitive price. However, you'll need a special online bank account, or the help of a friend who has one, to buy anything.

My friend bought mine for me off of taobao. It was 50RMB including shipping. Her husband is a computer geek so he scanned the page before she bought it. The important thing to check is to make sure the seller and product have good track records. My pad doesn't support freestyle writing, but, then again neither does Skritter. It is the bare minimum pad, but it is enough that I can Skritter well.

I can recommend the 汉王小龙女, paid 180RMB for one in Shanghai.

I also have a Hanwang, bought for 200 RMB in China. Great pad with some great(!) handwriting recognition software

Anybody else writing on a touchscreen? works well for me!

thanks for the help people! Looks like I've got an excuse for a trip to the big city this weekend...

can anyone recommend a particular place to buy a wacom tablet in Beijing?

thanks in advance