I was running the '95 Taurus filters for the past few years. However, my last oil change I went back to the 4Runner filter. My 4Runner has a coolant line that runs by the filter, and this always made the longer Taurus filter more of a pain to put in or take out.

As far as brands go, I almost always used the Purolator PureONE filters. Now that I live a block from the nicest Napa store I've ever been to, I'll probably switch to the Napa Gold filters, or just order a bunch of OEM filters from TRDparts4u.