mistermumbles: The Logitech pads (F-series) are at best only okay. I don't get why so many people recommend them.
I recommend them mainly because they support both XInput (for newer games) and DirectInput (for older games). With pretty much all other gamepads you are stuck to either one, which may be problematic for many games.
However, even the Logitech F-series (in DirectInput mode) has the issue that older PC games expect a rectangular movement area for the analog stick(s), while these newer gamepads (F-series, XBox360 etc.) have round analog movement. This may be a problem for some older games, ie. you don't reach the analog stick maximums diagonally.
Of course one option is to buy two different gamepads, one for XInput and another for Directinput, if one feels so. That also fixes this "rectangular movement area" problem. Besides that, I personally don't like the design and ergonomics of the XBox360 gamepad, it feels like the infamous Atari Jaguar gamepad.
mistermumbles: The analog sticks have ridiculously big dead zones.
As I recall, that is an old issue, apparently fixed in newer models. I haven't noticed "ridiculously big dead zones" with the F310 gamepads I've bought, and the reports also seemed to suggest that it affected only some people, possibly those with some older models. E.g. there was this Youtube video where someone demonstrated with a calibration utility how his Logitech F gamepad had indeed some issue with big dead zones, but then another video as a reply to it where the same did not happen.
I've also tested my F310 with joy.cpl, and didn't see such issue with unnaturally large deadzones.