Honestly, if you're going to be doing a lot of work that requires MS Office, you're better off putting Windows on your mac (whether it's Parallels, VM Fusion, Bootcamp, whatever) and running Office there, granted, I haven't used Office '11, but the headaches I got from formatting errors isn't worth it with '08...Otherwise, I think iWork is fine unless you need a more robust Spreadsheet program.
I have only owned 2 Hard Drives in my entire life that hasn't failed on me or suffered noticeable performance deteriorate with a year: whatever came in my late '08 Alu Macbook, and my Western Digital Scorpio Black, although the WD is far superior performance wise. Those are the only two drives I can recommend to anyone, although drive failure is an inevitability...
I mirror everyone else's suggestions:
-Applecare (already used mine once)
-Good Sleeve/Bag (I like Waterfield myself, although it's a little pricey)
-External Hard Drive, or replace the internal HD with a superior drive and use the old drive as an external with an enclosure.