KeepCalm

They haven't failed me since I bought them - so I can't give you a firm date. 2 years give or take for the WDC, the Seagate has been going strong for 1 year. Before I buy a hard drive I usually check out newegg.com for user reviews. If an item has a reasonable amount of reviewers and it's at least a 4 out of 5 stars it should be reliable. I bought a WDC 1tb blue and a 1tb Seagate that both had 4 out of 5 stars and decent reviews. Remember, all hard drives fail. This is a matter of when, not if, the only way to save your files is to have multiple back-ups. I have stuff on my internal hard drive and then copies of my more important ones on a 300gb external hard drive and then my most important files have backups on dual layer DVDs.

Amd Kaveri A8-7600 (Quad Core with onboard Videocard that can run games like Skyrim/Bioshock Infinite on High and most newer games at Medium to Low as of this post)

8gb of 1866 mhz Kingston Memory

x2 1 TB HDD WDC 7200rpm 64mb cache (For Gaming/Storage)

Kingston 120 GB SSD (For OS)

Corsair 550 watt PSU

FM2+ Mobo Gigabyte (cannot remember model but it comes with usb 3.0)

I could have probably spent more, but I didn't feel like making it better would be justified when I don't have enough time off from work to game. I just needed a PC to do paperwork and light gaming. The CPU had a reasonably decent built-in video card and it was roughly 4,800 pesos. I got the parts on sale too, though I only added on the SSD and extra HDD later on.

Price rundown was this:

A8 Quad Core CPU 4.8k

1tb 7200rpm WDC HD 2.4k

Twin 4gb 1866 mhz Ram 2.4k (was on clearance sale - that was a gamble on my part since sale items don't have warranty)

Mobo with 3.0 USB slots 2.4k (was discounted for some reason I cannot remember, but only by a few hundred)

Corsair PSU 2.1k (Never go generic if you can afford to, your PSU is your PC's heart, the CPU is it's brain. You don't spend so much money to risk it all on something shitty. That's like buying a sportscar and swapping out your engine with a second hand sarao jeep engine.)

Case 1k (CD-R King used to sell these huge cases at 1k, they no longer do, but I think there are comparable cases at 1.5k)

Monitor 19.5 inch 3.7k (You do not buy a cheap small monitor, because you'll be using this for a long time. Also buy LED. Old CRT monitors use plenty of power and heat. If you're really strapped for cash use a 1k refurbished LCD at your own risk)

My rig was roughly 18,800 php, complete - . I still had my old mouse, keyboard and speakers. I do know you could probably cut the costs if you only bought 4gb ram, a smaller 500gb HDD and used an old monitor of yours, but I would never suggest using inferior PSU. Also a CPU cooler is nice, they cost around 500 pesos (the quieter ones cost more and amd's stock coolers aren't really good if you'll game) and you'll want them if you're going to game for extended periods on this rig anyway.

Globe has decent wired service, but with a bandwidth cap that resets daily for data only plans. If you keep that in mind they are a solid internet service provider. They have bad wireless, but you can say the same for all other wireless providers in the country. Basically, pick your poison as far as wireless is concerned. Pre-paid wireless is always bad, postpaid is somewhat better.

As for simple calling... I like Globe, they're reliable in Metro Manila. But outside it I think Smart has better coverage. I live in the metro so I use globe.

LED. LED has caught up as far as picture quality is concerned and Plasma TV use so much power they're like running a hair dryer for hours on end.

I've stopped using external hard drives. What I do is use internal hard drives as external hard drives. If you have a hard drive that has the operating system your other extra (secondary drives) function as mere usb drives that are just harder to remove. They don't come with the convenience of being easy to move or mount, but if all you're using them for is file back-up, they're the best way to go. Now if you want a reliable external hard drive go with solid state ones, their only real problems are cost and that there's a limited number of times you can write and read over them. But they are far less likely to break because of far fewer moving parts, if you can claim that they have any real moving parts for practical purposes.