Graphics tablet + what software = ability to communicate in Chinese?

[Wonderland]

RE: Pingrid and Pablo...thank you, I downloaded both (plus the voice recognition) and I think I can use these.

Pingrid is great practice for identifying and writing characters! It seems to want to do more identification than writing, (unless you ask for writing), which is just right for me at this stage. Pingrid seems fussier than Skritter about how the strokes and hooks are drawn.

For identification, Pingrid is better with a mouse because I never know where the tablet cursor will start out from and keeping the clicker "clicked" to see the definition stay up for a prolonged period of time might be tricky with the tablet. The Chinese voice synthesis works great!

Pablo has the handwriting recognition dictionary I will probably use when I get better at drawing characters--very nice real time recognition!

It gives a whole bunch of characters to choose from even before you have finished drawing in the box.

I'm not sure how to use the (alternative) regular search bar at the top--the program froze up (not responding) when I pasted in some characters from cn.yahoo.com.

[Normunds]

It seems to want to do more identification than writing, (unless you ask for writing), which is just right for me at this stage.

You can change this setting from Handwriting menu, so you get "writing only" practice. I do not use it (writing only) normally, but I imagine you can use it with a combination of pinyin+sound+English word, as in the situation when many characters have the same pronunciation and there is no context, it becomes confusing which one you are supposed to write. In any case I prefer first to be able recognize the character and then only learn how to write it, especially as it seems to reinforce recognition as well. And that's what Pingrid is doing by default.

I'm not sure how to use the (alternative) regular search bar at the top--the program froze up (not responding) when I pasted in some characters from cn.yahoo.com.

I have not seen it freezing, but you can always use F10 button - select text in browser or any other application and click F10, or other button that you can define in options (opens from the small triangle in the upper left corner; not only Wenlin has a special UI :-)