Very good advice. During the process of selection you also should research 'bad neighborhoods' in my case despite a MANY spam reports my host was also banned from Google and blacklisted, signs of a bad neighborhood for sure. This can and probably will effect your rankings...and it really sucks, cuz it aint your fault. This is who I went with after alot of research: www (dot) superbservers(dot)net/services/serversGooglepromo.php I even got a discount for a dedicated server through a Google promotion...and, what do yu know?...they're canucks .
My sites are hosted with www.HostGator.com - I've been very happy with their services. The cpanel includes Fantastico and other features. They also have live chat support.