I agree that you should get the biggest hard drive you can afford. On the other hand, I wouldn't necessarily recommend that for you, LHSer, because, as you say, the computer is relatively old.
I bought a 30GB drive simply because I have my interests and uses for that space gagued pretty well. I'm not expecting some "killer app" to come along anytime soon that'll require extraordinary amounts of space.

And besides, I have another 30GB drive laying around (also an IBM Deskstar 75GXP) that I can use if I feel the need to.
Speaking of DVD's and such, Toshiba makes a very neato DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive for under $200. It's an 8x DVD-ROM, 8x CD-RW, and 32x CD-ROM (yes, it rewrites at 8x). When I bought it, I was very impressed. It's sooo convenient to have just one device for that stuff... and a bit faster too, since there's just one device on that IDE cable.
