So the Million Dollar Question (actually, I guess it is the "$180-higher cost + shipping" question) is whether the Funcube Dongle is significantly better than one of the cheap $20 RLT-SDR tuners?
A key limitation of the RTL dongles is dynamic range. I have an APRS station about 2km from me, and whenever it sends out packets on 144.39, it really hurts the poor little RTL when I have it set with enough gain to hear, e.g. AO-72. All sorts of spurious responses appear in the waterfall on both sides of the actual signal, and satellite reception is essentially impossible.
The RTL-SDR has only 8 bits of dynamic range, while the FCD has I think 14 bits, so it can tolerate a lot more signal range. I have no personal experience with the FCD at this location, but I expect it would perform much better.
-Joe KM1P