First post here. Been a lurker for a long time watching this forum.
Any other sites like resellerratings.com around? I've been using them for a long time but it'd be nice to know if there are others. That one site has saved me so much heartache in terms of judging good sellers. It also let me discover newegg which has been awesome.
Regarding Samsung IDE hard drives, they are okay drives, I'd rather spend a few extra bucks and get a Western Digital, Maxtor, Seagate or IBM (in that order with IBM and Seagate around the same ranking). Hard drive manufacturers biggest money is not the retail market, it is the OEM market such as the Dells, the Gateways, the HPs, etc. This may have changed, but Samsung I do not believe is used in any of the big name OEM markets (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Why is this important, is because the OEMs have extremely rigourous quality requirements and testing (environmental chamber tests, start/stop tests, etc) above and beyond what most hard drive manufacturers do internally.
If a particular drive model/capacity can make it into an OEM, then the design for that drive is fairly robust. IBM used to have very little penetration into the OEM market except into their internal computer suppliers, so for that reason I would stick with WD or Maxtor. Things may have changed over the last year or two, but in general a good practice might be to see what is being sold at Dell or Gateway and then buy the same drive model outside if you can get a better price.
gaz