Faster than a speeding CoLo

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 ;-))