I'm quite new to Linode, I've only had my account for a few days, but for anyone who's interested in investing in a Linode, here's what I have to say:

- Setup of my account was very quick
Once I applied for my account, it was activated within 20 minutes. I realise this might not *always* be the case but from my understanding, the admin (Chris is his name) does his very best to activate accounts ASAP.

- Questions posted to the forum usually get a very good, and quick answer. The administrator himself (Chris) is quite often online in the forums, browsing. If you pay attention at the very bottom you'll notice it says the users online. Or at least from my timezone he is, I'm usually on between 7pm - midnight everyday EST.

Overall I'll say once again, I'm very impressed. As a note I'd like to also add that sure lots of other places have cheap virtual servers, but they always had something wrong with them. Some of them didn't allow you to be involved in any ways with IRC, some of them didn't allow you to do adult site hostings. For the price I'm paying for this VS I think it's a way better bang for the bucks then getting a managed reseller account. Plus, I can get lots of experience and learn alot by setting up everything myself. This virtual server is great for about anything you want to do, wether it's a personal mailserver, ftp server, webserver, or even just for a shell server for you and a few friends. At 1$/IP, it's great for vanity hosts (vhosts)
for a BNC (psyBNC, EZBounce, etc..). It's basicly great for whatever you wish! And I'll say this again, at $19.99, you can't go wrong!



Erik
ducky AT thermofart DOT homeunix DOT net
http://thermofart.homeunix.net

I agree - linode.com is a total dream compared to my last host!

The speed is far better than I expected, people are helpful, and everything just works. Anybody using virtual hosting should seriously consider linode, especialy if you are using cgi and want tight control over server setup/optimisation.