Ryan
I have dealt with Andrews, Bintel, and Sirius Optics and have had no issues with any. GSO dobs are very good for the money and 8" is a great place to start.
Collimation is one of those things that I think are designed toi frighten beginners away from our wonderful hobby. The important thing for a beginner is not to get too hung up on it. Collimating a scope is an exercise in diminishing returns, so going from a scope really badly of of whack to one roughly collimated yields a very noticeable increase in image quality and each time to tweak it a bit closer to perfection the improvement is less. On an 8" at f6 getting collimation pretty close will do to start. It makes no sense spending an hour collimating a scope when that time is better used actually using the scope. NOTE I am not saying don't collimate, just be realistic about the benefits.
As collimation tools, if thinking of a laser one, just be aware that they are really only useful as a final tweak. A good guide to collimation without a laser is here
http://www.astro-baby.com/collimatio...on%20guide.htm and it certainly applies very well to an 8" dob.
Springs and knobs can be upgraded, certainly the springs on the GSO 12" should be. The 8" mirrors is much lighter so from what I have seen the springs are not so bad in the GSO. Knobs simply make the process tool free. If using a tool to collimate the secondary a good tip is tape a bit of cord to the tool and tie it round your wrist so you dont drop it on the main mirror. You also collimate with the tube horizontal but I am not a fan of this for two reasons 1 it can be uncomfortable and 2 the clips holding the primary are not tight, so the mirror can move slightly unless the tube is above horizontal.
Malcolm