Panasonic PV-GS180
That's the model we went with. It has great performance in its price range. Being mini-dv it's still a bit bulky and noisy and it's worse than the equivalent canon model in low light. The idea was to get something that would last us a few years until HD cameras with solid state drives were more reasonable. I didn't want to bother with mechanical hard drive models and the mini dvds scared me too for some reason.
Decent camera and right before Christmas it was really cheap at BB/FS.