If you're spending less than $150-200 it seems to be hard to beat a VPS. Certainly there are cheap dedicated servers to be had, but I don't believe you'll get such a high quality network and standard of support as with Linode/Slicehost. $150-200 seems enough to get a decent dedicated server with a respected host such as Softlayer, or 10tb.com who resell Softlayer servers at crazy prices. That said, I have heard a number of people recommend Hetzner.