radiator and heater hoses

I'm going to change my coolant soon, and also the thermostat, radiator hoses, and heater hoses. I haven't tried to determine how difficult the heater hoses are to change on a 2.7L, so if anyone has done it, please chime in.
Second question, on the radiator hoses: Gates are less than half the cost of OE. Has anyone had issues with the Gates hoses? I generally stick with OE parts, and Gates was once a respected brand, but I haven't bought anything from them in probably 20 years

 

We use gates belts and hoses at the shop I work at and never had any issues. Coolant hoses themselves don't seem to fail very often regardles of what brand they are unless they get oil or other contamination on them or the coolant breaks down and destroys them, it's almost always the plastic fittings (if there is any) that fail before the rubber hose.

 

Thanks. I take a ~4k mile road trip every summer to CO, so I'm very much into preventative maintenance vs breaking down in the middle of nowhere. I need to change the coolant, so after 140K miles and 13 years the hoses will also get changed.