RE: savage rimfire?
I've had both and they shoot just fine. I currently have a savage 17 HMR with the heavy barrel and no accutrigger, I did do a trigger job on it though. Like above it will shoot 1 inch or better at 100 yards with hornady ammo.
I used to have a savage youth model in .22 long rifle. It was so-so when I got it, but after a trigger job and breaking in the barrel it got pretty good. It would shoot 1 inch groups at 50 yards with the right ammo, and I even got a few 1 inch groups at 100 yards with some CCI Velocitor's or what ever they are called.
If you go to Rimfirecentral.com you will see that the rugers are sort of hit and miss in the accuracy department. They look good and feel nice, much more like a centerfire than a rimfire. However not all of them shoot that great out of the box from what I can gather. You could spend almost half the money on a savage or marlin and almost all of them shoot excellent right out of the box. Trigger jobs don't hurt though, they both have sort of nasty triggers stock. I would imagine the accutrigger version would be a great improvement. I have not had the chance to pull the trigger on one yet.
If you want to spend ruger money, look at a CZ instead they are pretty nice.
Paul