1. I am with "juniperlater" on
Xbench.
2. I am very pleased with LaCie discs. I bought a 500GB one about 5 years back, and it have been a pleasure so far. Still run great.
FireWire 800 is a big bonus, since its about twice as fast as USB 2.0 and FireWire 400.
3. Drag and drop to the *.app to the Trash. Deleted the corresponding .plist file (usually located in ~/Library/Preferences/) to remove its preferences as well.