I've only dealt with a few Samsung drives, none of them were dead or having problems. They were all a couple of years old, worked fine. If they had problems like the 75 and 60 gxp's, or the current fujitsu problems, we'd know.
I've had good results from a variety of Samsung products. While usually not the very best, they've all been high quality and very reliable..... like this 753df monitor I'm using right now.
I certainly wouldn't hesitate to use a samsung hdd if the price was right.
Check storagereview.com to see how they stack up performance-wise.....