I bought a 'Philips HR2304 Ice Cream Maker' from amazon recently and I would highly recommend it.
Instead of having to freeze the whole bowl, it has a removeable disc (which is approx 2 inches thick by 7 inches across) at the bottom of the bowl which you freeze, this takes up a lot less room than having to have a whole bowl in your freezer.
I also bought an additional cooling disc, so I could make more than 1 batch of ice cream at a time (like the frozen bowl types of machine, the discs need to be in your freezer from 18-24 hours).
I have used the machine an awful lot already and I really do think I will continue to use it regularly (unlike the bread maker I purchased, which has probably only seen day light a handful of times).
I would also recommend 'Ben and Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream and Dessert Book', which was £4.99 on amazon when I bought it and the recipes are both easy to follow and a lot tastier than any commerical ice-cream I have ever bought.
The only trouble is that I bought the machine so I could make ice cream suitable for my diabetic DH and for my son who has a casein free diet, however now that my DH has tasted the ice cream from the Ben & Jerry's book, I doubt I will ever be able to move him on to more diabetic friendly recipes.
I was planning on investing in a larger expensive inbuilt freezer type machine, if this philips machine proved to me that I enjoyed making home made ice cream and that it tasted nice.
However despite both of these things being proved correct, I am going to stick with the Philips machine as it is so easy to use/clean/store, that I see no need in upgrading at all.