If you check out lowendbox vps, their top-rated providers almost always beats linode (and alike) in almost all category you can think of.
There are more things in heaven and earth, pavs, than are dreamt of in your vps comparison tables.
People choose slightly more expensive hosting because it is often less oversold, not maxed out (you're sharing resources with everyone else on your server after all), they have libraries, example stacks, backups and extra services, and the support is better. If you pay $5 a month, you'll get $5 a month of support (or the provider will go out of business). How much of your time would $5 a month pay for?
I've used both slicehost and Linode, and a few other hosting companies who promised the moon and failed to deliver. Currently a happy Linode customer and have more important things to worry about than saving insignificant sums of money per month on what is a critical service for a web company.
Honestly, I just trust Linode more than what I might find off of lowendbox.com. I'm happy to support them. For most of us running startups, are we all trying to compete with our competitors purely on who can race the bottom pricing?
There are more things in heaven and earth, pavs, than are dreamt of in your vps comparison tables.
People choose slightly more expensive hosting because it is often less oversold, not maxed out (you're sharing resources with everyone else on your server after all), they have libraries, example stacks, backups and extra services, and the support is better. If you pay $5 a month, you'll get $5 a month of support (or the provider will go out of business). How much of your time would $5 a month pay for?
I've used both slicehost and Linode, and a few other hosting companies who promised the moon and failed to deliver. Currently a happy Linode customer and have more important things to worry about than saving insignificant sums of money per month on what is a critical service for a web company.