I love the Virtua Sticks, especially the ones with the straight stacked 3x3 button layout, and five buttons on the bottom row. Not like the Mad Catz sticks that have a weird angle on the 3x3 stack that you need to play with two left hands.
If I had a machine shop handy I'd pull the face plate off my Mad Catz and make a plate with the Virtua Stick layout.
Yeah, the most annoying thing about the Mad Catz sticks is that they use Viewlix layout instead of Astro City.
Just for the PC issue I'm going with the hori
Mad Catz and Hori sticks both have less-than-universal PC compatability. Hori sticks tend to be slightly more likely to work (although I used to have a PS3 Round 2 TE and currently have a X360 Round 2 TE modded to work on PS2 and PS3 as well, and I've never had a problem using either of them on windows PCs), but if you're going to be using the stick primarily on PC, I'd suggest making sure you can get your money back in case it doesn't work.
In general, HRAPs and TEs are about equally good in terms of stick/button quality, but if there's little/no price difference, I'd recommend the HRAP VX SA over a Round 2 because the layout is a little more comfortable for playing on your lap.