Used to use one of those electric jobs that rubs against the nosewheel on a 421. It was nice since it was very portable and you could throw it in the nose. But if the nosewheel was wet then you had some slippage, and if the ground was icy then forget about it. We also had a gas powertow that was broken 50% of the time, but worked a little better in slippery conditions. It was still a real pain to use, and you had to push down hard on it if it was slippery, and it would stall, or the chain would jump the sprocket, or it would be out of gas. It was always a struggle. For the money that these things cost, you're frankly better off using a vehicle with a hitch and a towbar (if you can drive up to your hanger). If you put a hitch on the front of your vehicle then its a cinch.
The coolest looking small tug that I've seen was used at the Perkiomen Valley Airport (N10). I don't remember the brand but it looked like a small lawn tractor with the front wheels completely removed and a hydraulic nosewheel picker-upper mounted on the back, with hydraulic steering between the pincer and the tractor. The cool part was that the "back" became the front, and the operator sat on the hood of the tractor facing "back" and steering that way. They really could move airplanes around quick with this thing, since you could just roll up to a plane, pick up the nosewheel hydraulically, then move it around. Anybody know what kind of tug this is? It looked sort of halfway homemade but had a brand name.