I've had great success with Maxtor and have heard nothing but good about Seagate. I have little experience with WD after a couple 6.4s died on me, I refused to buy that brand again. Stay away from IBM Deskstars since they've been discontinued. IBM now outsources its HDD to Hitachi, and I've not heard anything one way or the other.
Given all that I'd say performance / acoustics should be about the same for all so just find the one with the longest warranty (3 year).