I'm planning on buying an Intuos when I get my loan money, and I'm wondering if the Intuos4 is worth the extra few hundred bucks. My biggest problem with my Graphire is the lack of control. I have much better line control when I draw on paper, and when I draw with my Graphire, my lines tend to go everywhere unless I ground my hand, so I can't draw particularly loosely. One of the biggest draws about the Intuos4 for me is that it apparently feels like drawing on paper, so I wonder if this will solve my problem. But I hear that the surface gets smooth after a while anyway, so I'm wondering if I should even bother. But the aspect ratio is closer to what my monitor is, so I wonder if that will also help since I tend to set the tablet drawing area to my monitor.

Has anyone used both? What's your opinion?

I have a Bamboo tablet that had a textured surface. But it wore smooth after a couple months. It sounded more like drawing with a marker instead of a pencil.
I think it's weird that they give you replacement pen tips; expecting them to break. What are the tips made of? Across two tablets I've never had a pen tip break on me. Mine are hard plastic, the only way its going to break is if I drag it across concrete and grind it to dust. The only explanation I can think of is that other pens must have a softer tip made of rubber foam or something. Or the tips are longer then mine and can snap if pressured the wrong way.

Apparently the nibs on the Intuos4 rub down really fast, but it comes with tons of replacement ones, and the surface of the tablet is too smooth to matter after a while.