Despite what you might hear on this board about Manitou, I think the Minute 2 is a fine fork, especially for the money. I have yet to hear about ANY manufacturer without it's share of issues in the past. From what I read manitou seems to have above average customer service.

As far as fork recommendations, seems like your looking at both XC oriented forks and all mountain forks. What type of riding are you into? Since you had a SID, I'm guessing XC. In that case I would recommend the New Manitou R7 which should be coming out any day now. It's supposed to weigh about 2.9lbs and feature 30mm sanctions, with stiffness on par with their Black line.