I'm moving from a colo (dedicated) server because:

1) I only get 1Gb incoming per month - excess data costs arm, leg and firstborn child.
2) Provider has dubious service quality.
3) Connectivity could be better.

Looking to run two VPS, currently evaluating Linode and VPSLink; I'll either stick with these two or have two Linodes, depending on the way some things pan out.

I am delighted to say that, at most times, running an ssh session on my Linode on the other side of the planet is no slower than running an ssh session on my colo on the other side of the country. (The VPSLink one is a bit slower.)

Web pages (dynamic and static) seem to come back from my Linode faster too, although there is a slight pause at the beginning, possibly as the TCP/IP connection is opened.

Whilst VPSLink is slightly better at present on what is offered for the price (bandwidth, resources), I don't feel that the community is as good, you don't get Tom answering pre-sales questions within a breath of having asked them and their VPS is positively weird when it comes to checking resource usage.

There's room for improvement here at Linode, but it looks like the guys a) know this and b) are doing something about it.

And I can now sleep nights, knowing that I'm not having to trust a clapped out old box with only one disc in the RAID array (don't ask) and no replacement plan for when it blows up (try explaining that to the customers).

Conclusion: from experience to date, Linode gets the Smiffy Seal of Approval (for what that's worth )

Followup: having heard a lot of the right noises from the Linode team, I have requested termination of my VPSLink server and am currently setting up my second Linode.

There is no way to specify where a Linode is created; for better redundancy, I wanted my second in a different data centre. Problem? No. I opened a support ticket and was relocated in very little time.

Now that's service.

I was tempted to Linode by (amongst other things) an imminent doubling of the RAM of all virtual servers. A few quick calculations allowed me to select smaller than optimal configurations (they actually have been working very well, nonetheless), pending the upgrade.

Well, the upgrade has been done, I'm now at the figures wanted.

But quite unbeknown to me, my disc capacity and bandwidth had also doubled!

Can't get better than that!