Usually if I want to play with mouse+keyboard options I use mouse + keyboard. Reason I'd want to use a gamepad is for dual analog games where I might want more than 8 directions and binary (either pressed or not) for more than one set of controls. It's very few games I know which support two mice, one for moving and one for looking.

Avoid the wireless controller like the plauge (Not sure about the wired version), it constantly loses its signal and eats batteries so fast you'll find yourself constanly replacing them, also the drivers for the PC really suck. You've been warned.

For the love of gods, on PC we have a mouse and a keyboard. No need for any other shitty controller imho....

one thing to know about 360 controllers for pc:

you can buy those 360 controllers that are sold as pc controllers and have maybe a driver disc included
or you can buy a normal 360 controller (at least the wired versions)

only difference between them is that the 360 controller is cheaper and doesnt have the driver disc

Actually, many older PC games were designed with joysticks in mind. The dominance of mouse+keyboard is comparatively recent.

I've never had major issues with my 360 controller. It's been great for Emulators which is what I use it for mainly.

On the point about Psychonauts, you WILL need xpadder or something similar because for whatever reason, the game doesn't seem to recognise the L and R triggers naturally. And that was a real pain because it meant there were commands essential to the game that were left out.

I've used it with Zsnes, Gens+ and Project64 and it's been great with all of them.

EDIT: Also, I think the drivers for the pad are freely available to download.

Technical details - I run my wired 360 controller on my Vista-64 bit machine and its essentially plug-n-play. I don't believe I did anything special. I think with by XP machine I had to find drivers, but they were not hard to find.

An adapter isn't going to save the OP any money, or at least not much. I bought my controller for $40 new IIRC and by the time you get the PS/2 adapter, buy xpadder and the controller itself you haven't saved any money.

Plus, Sony controllers suck, and they arrogantly refuse to release an adult size controller. Might not be bad for some, but for those of us with adult sized hands, it's easy to get cramped up due to the tiny controller and generally bad ergonomics.

So it wasn't my imagination, I noticed this while playing Blur and Flatout 2 but I thought nothing of it. For me it steers very slightly to the left the moment I start to accelerate.

I've found them to be somewhat comfortable, after I train myself not to hold them as intended. They're tiny enough that it's just about more comfortable for me to use the wrong thumb on the sticks, and ultimately I have to train myself to barely hold the thing at all. Which isn't good considering that the damned things vibrate, so I have to hold them securely enough for the damned thing not to fall out of my hand when I'm taking damage.

I realize that it's a trademarked design, but that design was never acceptable for adults. Kids with small hands it might work, but given whom it is that they're marketing these to, it blows my mind that they refuse to release a properly sized and proportioned controller.

Case in point, I have a suspicion that Descent would work well with dual analogue sticks.

there is actually a small dead zone but it's small enough that if you hold the controller slightly wrong it will move the sticks just enough to cause movement.
I think it's more they don't want to admit they made a mistake and that something MS did was actually good...

To be honest, it makes me feel unclean whenever I say that MS has done well at something, but in this case, they have. The controller isn't perfect, but I can't recall ever having used one that was more comfortable.

Tbf the xbox as a whole is a pretty good system if it had a larger disk space for it's optical drive and a non proprietry HDD it would be near perfect. (RROD seems to be a thing of the past)