leepr,
Well, now that IAmAtMyWItsEnd has weighed in, and in the interests of "balance", I'll throw my thoughts into the discussion. 
There is no doubt that DreamHost has had some problems of late, but my experience has been considerably different than that of IAmAtMyWitsEnd. I've hosted sites at DreamHost for almost 10 years now and, while I have seen performance and downtime issues arise from time to time, I have also seen them resolved and managed.
My overall experience with DreamHost remains positive and for me, and my clients, the flexibility and power DreamHost offers for what they charge still makes DreamHost a viable alternative and I am happy to host my clients here if their site is suitable for *any* shared hosting provider's service.
In reply to:
...all you need to know is that DH will bury you in downtime if you have client or monetized websites....
Well, I suppose that might be true if "all you need to know" is IAmAtMyWitsWnd's opinion - personally I'd rather be astute enough to recognize that others' experiences are likely to vary. The economics of webhosting are such that if the majority of users are dissatisfied with performance and uptime, the host will not survive; I suggest that DreamHost's continued growth, warts and all, is an indication that they do much more "right" than they do "wrong".
In reply to:
.. 1and1's webpanel may not be as 'glitzy' or as 'Happy :p' - it will be FAR MORE available than DH's will be over any period of time
That's an interesting claim, but it fails on it's face - who knows what will happen over "any period of time". I know that begs the obvious, but it is also indicative of the passionate negative feelings some frustrated customers/ex-customers will express. Does frustration beget exaggeration? Sometimes, I think it does.
In reply to:
Others (the promocode whores) will dismiss my comments as simply 'one displeased customer' however, I can tell you that at this time DH's usage is limited to illegal file sharer's and the likes (due to the unlimited bandwith+)...
I can't speak for the "promocode whores" (I don't use them myself, except to pass along a discount on rare occasion, and only upon request), but, while not dismissing IAmaAtMyWitsEnd's comments "simply", I think they are primarily indicative of *his* experience, and *not* the general experience of most DreamHost customers.
It's also patently ridiculous to assert that "at this time DH's usage is limited to illegal file sharer's and the likes (due to the unlimited bandwith+)". To me, that level of exaggeration triggers a warning about the voracity of the opinion offered.
Have the low-cost first-year promocodes resulted in some abusers trying to use DreamHost in this way (considering the account almost a "throw-away" because of how little it cost that first year)? No doubt! That said, DreamHost routinely throws those folks off the service for TOS violations, and their recent changing of the promo code system to curtail the amount of discount given is a step in the right direction toward reducing that kind of business.
Frankly, I'd rather see those promocodes either go away, or be severely curtailed, but I understand that DreamHost feels they need to offer such a program to remain competitive in *their* market, so meh.
In reply to:
however, real non promocode peeps like myself moved our business operations off of DH many years ago
Maybe some have, but certainly not all - I, and many other developers I know, still use DreamHost for sites that are suitable for hosting on a shared server, and I still find the overall performance/value ratio to be outstanding (and I consider myself a "real non promocode peep').
In reply to:
....if you want to cry a little bit, check out DH's own status page= dreamhoststatus.com..it would be comical if it weren't true
Looking at dreamhoststatus.com doesn't me me cry (well,at least not most of the time) - I very much appreciate the look at what it takes to keep a hosting business running, and I like seeing candid acknowledgment of the kinds of problems that *all* hosting providers encounter (and most will never admit to!). I'll admit that it would be a better "tool" without the idiotic blathering the comment section has become (gawd, I am convinced that, by and large, blog comment sections are the true toilets of the internet), but it does have it's entertainment value.
In reply to:
...to know that many web designers are losing their clients left & right due to these antics....
A web designer that loses their clients because of the level of problems on DreamHost is just not properly managing those clients. If the client's sensitivity to the occasional outage is sufficiently high that a hosting glitch prompts them to bolt, they should have never been hosted on an inexpensive shared platform in the first place. The "web designer" that put them there was either not intelligent, or educated, enough to identify that in the first place or was so careless in monitoring the state of the account and the client's satisfaction that he/she missed the opportunity to meet the client's needs. Blaming a web host for losing a client is ridiculous - you can always recommend they change hosts, and if you don't do that when you should, you deserve to lose that client.
There have been two or three instances over the years where I was faced with this issue. In each case, *I* contacted the client with accurate information about the issue, detailed the available alternatives, and encouraged the client make the business decision they felt was in their best interest. Interestingly, in each of those cases, the client ultimately decided the best business decision for them to make was to remain with DreamHost, as the value received greatly outweighed the inconvenience/frustration encountered.
The point to all my comments is this: YMMV, one host is not the "best" host for everyone, you should make your own decisions about what is best for you (and your clients), and the opinion of a satisfied customer is no less valuable than that of a dissatisfied customer. 
--rlparker
