If you want a great magazine for the "power user" get Maximum PC. I think they have a web site too, with that name. In the past few years, I've had hard drives from 2 manufacturers: Western Digital and Maxtor. I've had excellent results from both companies. I currently have a Western Digital 20GB and Maxtor 30GB In the past year or so I've had to replace both drives due to some power load problems in our ancient house (plug in the iron in the wrong outlet, and the power goes out.), and a dead UPS battery. In both cases, the drives were under warranty. Each company sent me a replacement hard drive immediately. I just gave them my credit card info as insurance that I would send them the old drive. I don't remember the details, but Maxtor does have a longer warranty. I ended up with a computer that is not totally of my own choosing.. (A long story.) I do have a builtin sound card which I disabled in favor of the SoundBlaster Live. I'm stuck with the onboard Intel AGP video chip, but it seems to handle everything I've tossed at it. One day when we're more prosperous I intend to build another new computer from scratch, and have more control over the parts.