I just want to state my strong reserves against anything from Optorite. Adding to my poor experience with one of their burners (a 32X model), recent reviews (of their CD-RW burners, not seen anything about their DVD burners) show that their media compatibility and writing quality (C1 errors number) is below average. If I'm to sell a DVD burner, it will almost certainly be a Lite-On, be it only because they regularly release firmware updates for their drives, therefore showing that they do invest in their products development and support far more than the average optical drive manufacturer.
And yes, the Abit NF7-S is a very good motherboard, just like the nForce 2-based GigaByte. Ask Handruin about it.
For budget boxes, I still go with Athlon XP configuration, because they do the job and you simply can't build something just as cheap with Intel processors (excluding Celeron, but I'll be dead before I sell a Celeron again, at least one with a laughable amount of cache such as the 128K variety).
For higher-end stuff, it depends on what the customer plans to do. P4 platforms are currently more mature than the few socket-754 now in sale. So I would probably opt for a Pentium 4-C above an Athlon 64 for the moment. In mid-January, I will probably sing another song.
And Radeon 9500 Pro are rather hard to find nowadays. Radeon 9600 Pro and XT are everywhere, dissipate a little less heat and offer comparable performances (comparable in that the user won't be able to tell the difference).
Last but not least, I'm very proud of being someone who can brag to have international influence, even as far as Australia.
