The difference in price spread out over a few years is a cheap price to pay for the benefits.
New Egg is a good source and locally, the Microcenter stores stock them if you have one in your area.
If you want to boost the performance of your laptop or desktop, replace your mechanical drive with a SSD (solid state drive). Expensive but dramatically faster.
In the week or so since the report was first published, several techies have posted on other sites as well that their experiences are pretty much identical with the results posted here. Your recommendations follow their indications, and we should all take note. I will definitely be looking much closer at the manufacturor of any new drives purchased in the future and plan on concentrating on Hitachi as much as possible.