Personally I'd avoid those with a hard disk. Hard disks are fragile and power hungry compared to flash memory.
They usually cost a fair bit more too.
From the curry's website..
PANASONIC HDC-HS900 .... £924.99
PANASONIC HDC-TM900 .... £849.99
PANASONIC HDC-SD900 .... £549.99
The only difference between these 3 are the recording media. The HS has an inbuilt hard disk, The TM has inbuilt flash memory, the SD has no inbuilt recording media, all have slots for SDHC cards.
I know which one I'd buy, the SD
then add a couple of 16GB cards (£20 ish each online - play.com and others) each card will hold around an hour of 50p video (the cams highest setting) or two hours at the next setting down, should be more than enough for anyone!
By my reckoning you'd have around £400 to play with to get those extra's Bob++ has listed but you may want to add an external mic to the list.