Chip stacks and Blinds for Home NL Hold'em Tourney

Looking for experience and opinions here:

I've been playing in a semi-regular 8-10 handed game for a year now, but we can never agree on the proper starting chip stacks and blind structure for a good one-table tourney.

Lately, we've started with 500-600 chips, with blinds starting 10-20, 15-minute levels. I feel like this isn't enough chips to establish a good strategy, or see enough hands. Others like having smaller stacks to increase the number of tourneys a night. My ideal is 1,000 chips, same blinds.

Anyone have good guidelines here?