UC Logic tablets have been around for a long, long time. We bought a pair for $24.99 each (DigiPro brand) from ThinkGeek around 2006, they had great accuracy. One of them still works today.
Wacoms over here used to cost up to 20x as much (>$500). This made the DigiPro ones the no-brainers. At the time tablets were not common at all due to high prices. They still sell the exact same model for bargain prices, but intuos/bamboo have fallen to the $100-200 range.
I was actually looking for a Bamboo this Christmas... tried it, realized it was kinda crappy, then decided to give the UC-L another chance. I'm beyond pleased! The thing is most people I know working in illustration or design just deal with the cost of the Wacom, since we already spend so much on regular media! Hopefully a few of them will try mine out and see what we've all been missing.