Any suggestions or programs or whois searches or whatever that you guys recommend, what's the best out of the best?
I guess you realize that Google has some funky new expired domain killer now because you mentioned link pop and not PR. That aside, there may still be some advantage to expireds in some of the other engines but as far as Google goes I've seen many webmasters lose entire years worth of work.
What exactly are you trying to accomplish with expireds, if I might ask?