This morning I got a phone call from Hostmysite.com whom read about my experience with Peer1 and Rackspace.

They wanted to offer their services, because they felt they stacked up favorably. The quote I received does stack up nicely and definitely merits consideration.

This happened before, I posted about my experience with Media Temple hosting, and received a flurry of recommendations in the comments.

I think its time to consider using the blogs as the first step in the process of finding solutions to business needs.

Perhaps a RFQ/RFP category or sub-blog that pings the various trackers like Technorati.

Or, should we have a microformat for RFQs and RFPs?

I have been using Slicehost.com for several months now.

To cut to the chase, these guys rock!

They are responsive, offer a solid service and are building a great community around their business.

They have a growing array of OS choices including CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Arch and Fedora.

The best news is that they are testing large VPS slices, up to 15GB!

If you need a great Virtual Private Server solution, sign up here to be up and running in a couple minutes.

Be sure not to miss their podcast for news about this stellar hosting service.

As my main project, MailTank, continues to grow and evolve we are faced with the challenge of scaling.

We faced the decision, either expand our data center footprint or move elsewhere.

After some research, I found the top managed hosting companies to be Rackspace.com and Peer1.com

In the last week I have gotten quotes from each, but the experience was considerably different.

I contacted both companies through their web sites, within a few minutes of each other.

A sale rep for Peer1 was immediately available via chat, which I took advantage of. Jeff, a very knowledgeable guy, answered my questions via chat.

After determining that I was not some “hosting” customer looking for something a step above shared hosting and he got on the phone with me.

20 minutes later, all my questions were answered and a few hours later I had a quote for managing our infrastructure.

Rackspace was a different experience.

I sent my request and hours later got a call from a sale rep whom gauged my needs, then scheduled a conference call through Webex a few days later.

During the Webex presentation I got a Powerpoint presentation about the company and then spent a few minutes talking to a technical lead about requirements.

At the end of the meeting, he scheduled follow-up conference call to discuss the proposal.

A couple hours after the initial conference call I got their quote.

As I sit comparing the quotes, before the final call with Rackspace, I realize that Peer1 just “feels” more like a place I would like to do business.

Jeff was on top of things, didn’t need a technician to ask me the basic questions, and didn’t waste my time building the value proposition based on his company’s historical track record.

Jeff is winning in my mind for one reason. He is selling me “a solution” not his “company”.

Besides, Rackspace is considerably more expensive and the proposed configurations that don’t stack up favorably with Peer1.

For example, Rackspace is offering a database server with RAID1, while Peer1 is offering RAID 10 storage.

In the end we are probably staying in-house until this summer.

But it is quite educational seeing how they each sell.

Twitter has been on my radar for sometime, as yet-another-inbound-stream of information to watch.

I always found it useful, since the bite sized morsels were more easily digested.

I say, “I get it finally”, because I discovered the shortcuts for sending replies and direct messages recently.

These features take Twitter to a whole new level.

No longer is it about following and being followed. Now I am participating in conversations through twitter.

It took learning the shortcuts of my favorite Twitter client, Twitterrific, to finally get it.

Wow. It makes Twitter so much more valuable.

“2008. There’s something in the air.” What does that slogan mean? On Tuesday, Steve Jobs will introduce whatever it is they have lurking in Cupertino.

Could it be movie rentals through iTunes? A revamped Apple TV with DVR? Yet another, better and cooler iPod?

Or perhaps, something innovative and game changing (yeah lame phrase, but bear with me).

With laptop sales eclipsing desktops, and iPods and iPhones leading to a perpetually mobile generation, wouldn’t it make sense for Apple to push connectivity everywhere?

What if Apple released a sub-notebook with the usual suspects and “one more thing” - WiMAX.

Paired with the 3G iPhone we will see in 2008 and Back to my Mac, it would be a powerful product to accelerate their growth in this powerful market segment.

What tea leaves am I reading to think this? A curious announcement timed for this coming Tuesday.

Sprint recently announced that the company is on track to begin offering their Xohm WiMax service in April of this year…the New York Times reported that the soft launch is set for this Tuesday.

(Via Sprint to Soft-Launch Xohm on Tuesday - dslreports.com.)

Sprint did a deal with Amazon for EVDO in the Kindle, why not Apple for a WiMAX enabled laptop?

Apple’s deal with AT&T certainly said nothing about WiFI or WiMAX, but may have locked them out of embedding EVDO.

With AT&T’s CEO blowing the lid on Apple’s 2008 iPhone plans it would be sweet revenge for Apple to work with Sprint.

Apple could build a strong relationship with Sprint, while fulfilling their obligations to AT&T.

One can dream and speculate. We will know on Tuesday.

Is the desktop metaphor dead, replaced by Web services like Google and Facebook? Or is Vista so bad that it’s not worth buying?

New data points to the latter suggestion, leaving Microsoft with two options. It can either view its sagging Vista sales as a testament to the incredible work of art that is Windows XP (gag). Or it can concede that Vista is a pile of potty.

(Via Does Vista’s stunted growth hint at the death of the desktop? | The Open Road - The Business and Politics of Open Source by Matt Asay - CNET Blogs.)

I don’t think Vista sucks and the desktop is definitely not dead.

Vista’s slow adoption is a simple business issue, Microsoft over-promised and under-delivered. Its that simple.

Coupled with a confusing pricing scheme and bungled Vista Capable vs. Vista Ready hardware marketing and you get slow adoption.

Nothing terribly difficult to understand, deeply revealing or impossible to fix.

They should release service pack 2 for Vista along side a new marketing campaign that replaces all the different versions with the Ultimate version for $99.

Everyone gets the same package, which would make it a no brainer for users and simplify support requirements.

One message. One product. One choice. Affordable. Win, Win for everyone.