It'll basically take a bit of time before you get used to it, but you should definitely find it not as painfully slow as using a mouse ie it is much faster to work with ;). And practice is always true - you become more efficient at doing things with experience. The good thing about tablets is that if you're going to do digital painting, you don't need to be as careful with your brushstrokes as you can just go over them again quickly (whereas with a mouse, there'd probably be a lot of undoing and then repainting).

My Wacom actually worked ok without the drivers, but then sometimes there'd be random jumping around of the cursor... so if that happens then I recommend you install any drivers otherwise it gets annoying.