A lot of what controller you decide on will depend on the DAW/Software you are using it with.

I had a Mackie controllers for a while and finally took it back. Mackie decided to use MIDI and not firewire to control the DAW and it has problems. I was using it with Samplitude and it would only allow me to fade up one or two channels at a time. If I tried to fade up more channels they would not go up together and only one channel would move up or none would move up. Also the Mackie I had seemed to have problems with the numeric channel display and it would not always work or would be showing me the same information even when I changed channels. My computer is running Samplitude 8.2, Windows XP Pro all current updates, all drives ATA 100 or better, 3.0 gig Pentium Processor, 1 gig of memory. This was a current Mackie controller and had all the updates done to it. I think Mackie would have been better to use firewire as the midi is just too slow.

This is one person's problems and your mileage may vary but I would only get a controller that you can take back if it does not work with your setup.

MTCW and FWIW

I've noticed a couple hot looking new products in this arena at musiciansfriend.com they have a new Tascam for under $1,000 which is a control surface *and* an analog mixer all in one. It can work freely as either. I also saw a similar product from M-audio.

I just bought an Onyx 1220 but if I had seen the new Tascam combo I would have checked it out first. I use a Behringer BCF200 and BCR200 for my control syrfaces, tricky to setup but fairly robust. I'm not sure I would recomment them as a control surface though per se. I say check out the new Tascam, it looks *very* impressive for the price. Here it is:
http://www.tascam.com/Products/fw1082_2.html
http://

I wonder what the quality is like? It seems to be a very appealing product. :D

I have seen that Tascam, but I dont think I can use this with pro tools LE. But that's about how much I want spend.