I have been using official "Xbox 360 controller for PC", which is compatible with Xbox 360, for 2 or 3 years and so far I had problems only with wrong mapping in Dreamfall and the game not remembering the new setup after restart.

You just need to download drivers from MS website. Buttons have already been recognized by any game supporting a controller properly.

Yeah, I agree. It works with nearly everything. There may be controllers with special features but the Xbox 360 has native support for nearly all modern games.

Combine the controller with Xpadder software and you can program it to do anything.

Seconded. I have one, and it's fantastic. It even works in WINE, too.

I have to ask, why would you play those games with a controller? a track pad would be more accurate!

If you have no experience with controllers I guess you should listen to all this peeps above this post.
Me? I think any PlayStaion2 looking controller is perfection. Using this one.

Another vote for Logitech F310. For newer XInput games it works similarly to the official XBox controller, while for older DirectInput games it also works perfectly, without the need for any additional XPadder utilities or such.

It is basically two gamepads in one, perfectly covering both older DirectInput gamepad games, and newer XInput (XBox gamepad) games.

What games do you plan to play?
Because if you are going to play RTS the controller is not usefull.

Platformers, point and click adventure, and shooters mostly.

Darthspudious, that's what I use now, but I don't know, I just can't get used to it. Just feels wrong to me. We are buying a small desk for our living room this weekend, so I'll probably use a good old fashioned mouse for my older games.(haven't been able to, no room on lap desk.) when I was growing up, we never had a computer, we always had consoles about 5 years behind. So playing 3rd person and other 3d games with a mouse and keyboard is just bizarre in my mind. More power to those who can rock it though.