Hey, i just read this in Popular Photography.

Photoshop Elements 3.0 costs $99

A Wacom Graphire 4 tablet cost $99 and comes with elements 3.0

http://www.wacom.com/graphire/index.cfm

i started with elements 2, it come free with with my canon s330 printer

A good reminder to newer choppers with software that
doesn't cut it.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 , which I guess is the latest version,
can be purchased very cheaply, hit places like walgreens, eckerds,
places that sell printers but aren't where people really go to buy them.
You can easwily pick up a new/marked down printer WITH Elements 4.0
for twenty to thirty dollars.
Elements is basically "photoshop lite" and is also very powerful.
It's not a bad subtitution for PS at all.

I'm working with Elements 3.0 and it's definitely an upgrade from 2.0. Several new additions such as the healing brush which is found in other versions of Photoshop. I would prefer to have PS 7.0 or CS2 but my uncle gave me Elements 3.0 and it's better than nothing right? Hey, I ain't complainin'!

I just got PS Elements 3 with my new WACOM tablet.
I played around with E3 today and it does a lot that full blown PS CS does ... although a few things were in odd places (that I'm used to in CS) but if your on a limited budget it's much better than MSPaint!

My tablet also came with a version of Corel Painter Essentials 2 and I have to say I like it better than Illustrator CS but then I have a hard time with Illustrator as it is...

Wett is correct== 3.0 is the current version.
Food for thought-- a hundred dollar tablet comes with seventy dollars worth of elements and the corel--hmmm
any choppers just starting out may want to consider it- the tablet ...you won't regret getting.