Regarding the hard drive: It looks ok, I attend film school and most of the students here have either Maxtor or Lacie hard drives. They're excellent, and very reliable. The tiger direct one you're looking at looks ok. Make sure you know what ur getting (in terms of whether its internal or external, how many rpms it is and if its firewire, usb2 etc.)

As for the camera: I have the Panasonic GS70 (it was one of the first models of that line, I got it about 3 1/2 years ago. Three words: I Love It. The color is amazing, make sure yours has a manual focus ring. It has all the great manual options you want and it's amazing. Small, highly, highly portable. I love it. The only drawback (if you even wanna call it that) is that the external mic input is placed in somewhat of an awkard spot but they might have changed it (my mic input is just above and to the right of where my right hand would go to hold the camera).

What I did, was print out the ad from BHphoto.com and took it to a circuit city. They beat BH's price by %10 and at the time they were running a promotion where if you bought a camera that was over $300 they gave you a free tripod and bag. So ask Best Buy/Circuit City if they'd beat the price.

Let me know if you have any other questions about the camera. And let me know if this was helpful.

Well I bought the Pan 300 so far I really like it.

Circuit city didn?t match BH's because the only match stores that are in the same state. But they found a local store that had it on sale and they matched their price.

I also got a 250 gig Maxtor HDD online.

Right know I am editing with a HP with a 2.8 Celeron using Vegas Movie Studio. It?s ok, but I am saving up for a Mac and final cut.

Thanks for the help airwalk