I bought a ZD8000 in 2005 and I've never had any problem with it except needing to clean the fan housings as it is on 24/7 as a desktop.  I clean the housings once a year.  This message is, in fact, being typed
on my ZD8000.  It is a Media Center Edition and also has a dual tuner hooked up which is used almost daily.  I'm running two external hardrives--one for backup of all important data, and the other external
harddrive is a 1 terabyte Western Digiital which I use for recording video as well as cable programming.  I currently have recorded nearly 800Gz of highly coveted movies and shows.  I also daytrade on it every
day and run two charting programs as well as my Broker's screens.  Also, during the day, I run Publisher, Illustrator, Word, Adobe PDF7 and download/upload frequently from my email.  Does it overheat as
others complain about.  The answer is no.  Just keep those fan housings clean and you're good to go.  And no, I don't have to strip it down to the skeleton in order to clean them.  All I do is  turn it off and blow as hard
as I can into the three external vents and make sure the fans rotate backwards at a high rate of speed.  Now, you boyz  and girlz can understand that that means there's little to no dust.  But please do NOT use
canned air as the moisture content in those little babies can do more harm than good.  Buy, hey, it's your coin.  The fans cycle on and off when needed.  It is clocked at 3.2MHz and it has 2 GHz ram.  It ROCKS!
I've got a modem, router, speakers and a laser mouse along with a few other gadgets and all splitting through several 4-port 2.0 hubs.  I have no complaints. 

I bought a second ZD8000 used, and have owned it for nearly a year.  I will clean the fan housings in a few months.  I use it as a portable computer and it does not operate more than 10 hours a day.
I also is a very busy laptop which uses all of the affore-mentioned software and externals including another terabyte external when I'm at the downtown office.  It's also a Media Center Edition with nearly the same specs.
It also runs cool and has no problems.  I'm actually looking for a third ZD8000  because the two that I own have been proven very, very reliable.  I would, and in fact, do, recommend them to everyone.


'Tail.