In regards to modem I personally am sold on any USR modems. They are pretty reliable and comes w/one of the best after support in the industry.
A case in point, I had two modems (generic Lucent chip + USR Courier ext) that was destroyed by a lightening the same exact time. The Lucent had no warranty/support but the USR modem that I got off an auction few yrs back came w/a limited life time warranty. (no receipt, box, manuals, documentations, etc...) When I call their tech support, I didn't expect them to issue me an USO(they had different name for RMA) so quick + hassle free. I had a replacement in 10 days period that they approximated.
During this time, I purchased a PCI USR winmodem from a local shop as a temp until I get mine back from their after support. It got killed by a lightening again and the store which I bought it from replaced it after varifying that it indeed was dead, saying that USR warranty takes care of it. During this time, I complained to my phone company (Bell) about what keeps happening everytime it rained and they said that nothing was wrong w/the phone line but two days later had no less than 4 trucks from the phone company in every "man-holes" in my neighborhood repairing all the lines for the next few weeks.
About two weeks ago, I purchased two ext. 56k USR modems from a trader off AGN and one of them was connecting at half the speed. The trader said he'll take it back but I wanted to see if I could get it to work first and I emailed USR tech support explaining the problem. I get a fast reply w/a RMA number but I wind up solving it by their free flash upgrade program.
Needless to say, no more generic modems for me. I like having modems that Windows 9x/2K seems to have native support included w/the OS and where the manufacturer have such a hassel free warranty policies.