I've been thinking of getting the Logitech F710 to have a wireless one. How's the D-pad?

I find the Nintendo Wii Classic Controller to be a great gamepad, but connecting it to a PC can be a pain. There are adapters and the Wii Remote uses Bluetooth, but I haven't found a solution that "just works". I use a Logitech F310, It's a decent controller. The buttons are not too hard and the D-pad is decent, but still way below the Nintendo D-pad. But I still have to see a D-pad that can compete with a proper Nintendo D-pad.

Been using it for 2 years now, it's one of the best D-Pads I've ever used.

If you can first try the Xbox controller, personally I didn't like it, the thumbsticks require too much force to move and they are indented instead of round which makes the experience even worse, it has an awful D-pad and shoulderbuttons, using seperate triggers required .dll hassles and it has no configuration softare to assign buttons, swap axis and set deadzones or sensitivities. Also the wired one has a suppressioncoil immediately where the cord leaves the controller which I found very annoying because it was always pressing keys from my keyboard in front of it.

Back when I did some online racing I had a Logitech Dual Action and I changed to a Xbox360, I played with it for over a year but my racing performance dropped from being up with the top drivers (who used steering wheels) to the back of the pack, when I changed back to my old Dual Action the comparison couldn't be more dramatic.
This caused me pretty much to hate the Xbox360 controller and if you want to suck at games its the controller to go with.

As mentioned above, the Logitech F710 Gamepad is a great pick for gaming on a PC! I can't stress enough how awesome it is, been using it for at least 2 years now, still the best gamepad for PC gaming :) I highly recommend it, you won't be disappointed!

I've one and I'm very happy with it. I use it when I play SNES games through emulations as it's quite close to the original SNES controller in design. I bought an adapter and aside from poor R and L buttons it works as intended.

Thank you, that's great to hear. I might get one to Christmas.

Which adapter are you using? I had the one from Mayflash where you can plug in two controllers, but it stopped working every time I sent my computer into standby mode. I would have to take it out, then plug the adapter into the computer and plug the controller into the adapter. I returned it, I would rather have a solution like my Logitech gamepad and flightstick which I can just leave plugged in and pick up at any moment.

I have the same one but I never tried using Standby mode(s) with it plugged in as I always minimize the amount of USB control devices due rising amount of issues.

So now that I'm reminded of how wonky the layout of the XBOX controller is compared to PS3 (no offense :P), I'm leaning more towards the Logitech series -- perhaps the 310 since I don't really care about rumble or extra things like that and it should save me a little $$.

Still don't like how big the deadzones seem to be, and people have also mentioned the shoulder buttons being a little difficult, but no choice is going to be perfect so we'll see!

For a first controller I'd recommend an XBox One controller (I find it better than the 360 one due to a nicer dpad, and better thumbsticks) because most games will have the mappings displayed correctly, which makes it easier to pick up and play.

I use a USB adapter to use my PS2 controller as a PC gamepad. Works like a charm.

I recommend the wired xbox controller too. No complaints so far.
Also, as mentioned before, most new games with controller support display the mappings for the xbox360 controller layout. Not to mention some games won't even recognize other controllers unless you use xbox360 emulators.

You mean the Logitech Profiler thingy? That is used for the DInput games, not the XInput ones, and the deadzone I encountered was on XInput mode. If you mean something else, I'll have to take a look.

Somehow that doesn't really surprise me as I never saw any benefit of XInput over DInput, it always seem like a douche move of M$ to push 3rd party manufacturers away and deteriorate PC gaming in general in favor of the Xbox.

Interesting piece of information on Wikipedia about it too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectInput#DirectInput_vs_XInput