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A lot of artist have art tablets like this.
From what I hear, Wacom is a great brand.

Most artists are digital artists, so the tendency is that they use tablets. Wacom is the best brand around for most artists. However their tablets are expensive. If you are a serious artist and draw 24/7 and is willing to spend a lot, I suggest a medium sized wacom Intuos. If you're on a budget, you may as well want to try the bamboo series. Would also suggest the bamboo fun since it's the bamboo tablet that's more geared towards drawing (also ordering one of these babies soon so :L )

If you're too cheap for wacom, you can always get a genius tablet. They're good as well, and I used to own one before a rat ate my cable ;_______;

As for the programs. They don't use paint. Paint is too basic for anyone to achieve the smooth lines. corel paint and Illustrator are the high-end painting programs. I can't really suggest photoshop, since illustrator > photoshop in terms of art needs, but it's a good one. However, if you can't afford the pricy price tags on these programs, you can always try Sai paint. Its cheaper but effective. Sometimes I use sai more than Illustrator. I've also seen a lot of artists who use sai as well. So it's a good program to get.

Also, I believe someone has also mentioned that an Intuos also comes packaged with Corel paint (same goes with some bamboo funs). I might be wrong though, since what I saw here in the philippines all have Intuos units with Illustrator packaged, and bamboo fun doesn't even have corel packaged like what the mainsite mentioned :/

Hope that helped <3

edit: Also, I used photoshop cs2 + cs3 illustrator + Sai paint + A genius tablet before. But since my tablet broke. I'm sticking to traditional art until I get a bamboo fun :L