I've got a slightly older Microsoft force feedback joystick than the one pictured above, and it drives me crazy. It may just be a setting that I've missed or something like that, but the force feedback just gets annoying.
The CH Products Combat and Flightsticks look pretty good and I'm planning on getting one. Take a look at
FSCentral. Their prices are lower than most places I've seen for the CH joysticks.
A couple of other sites that might help are
AVSim and
FlightSim. Both are dedicated to PC flight simulators and anything associated with flight sims, including hardware.
goates