I've had a few small sites (sub-50k uniques) hosted on Dreamhost for the past year. They go down. Alot. And the support is very slow to respond.

I've been a dreamhost customer since 2004 and receive near-instantaneous support (my e-mails are responded to within 15 minutes). I don't host anything mission critical there, but their shared hosting is pretty decent for a few PHP + Ruby sites I serve up.

Agreed, DH really is the most budget of budget providers, and their quality of service generally reflects that