Hosting support

One of my sites still runs on drupal 4.7 and is having a lot of mysql database connection problems. I emailed the hosting company about it and they told me that every reseller package comes with limitations on the use of CPU and MEM. See following quote:

"Resource Usage.
You agree to not use excessive amounts of resources. Any violations may result in us taking corrective action in order maintain server stability by killing any processes, disabling and/or suspending your account.

Dear All,
after a test period of hosting my website KG Photography (photography oriented) via a static ip on my personal server and being happy with the performance I moved it to a professional hosting service.
I need to admit that SiteGround is probably one of the best Drupal hosting services.
Hassle free.
The sql query that I had to import from my site was something like 16.8Mbs. It was handled gracefully.

Anyone have any tips on, with a standard Dreamhost/Drupal situation, how to optimize loading performance? I've barely started a site with a fairly basic configuration and about ten nodes and navigating to a node can take 5-10 seconds. I skimmed the optimization guides but don't know how much of that is applicable to a commercial hosting situation.

I was very pleased with my hosting company, Myriad Networks (www.myriadnetwork.com), up until they decided that Drupal 4.7.x was too dangerous to support. They gave me an ultimatum to upgrade to ver 5, after which they said they will shut me down for security reasons.

Considering I have a few installs with them as a hosting reseller, and some multi-site installs, this is a real pain to be put on a deadline for upgrading.

Page loads and administrative functions run slow as molasses on my 1and1 Beginner Hosting package ($2.99/mo). E.g., about 3 seconds to just load a home that shows the 4 steps to creating a new site.

Have any of you tried 1and1 and compared it to performance on other hosts or with more expensive 1and1 hosting? Is 1and1 Beginner really that slow, or is Drupal just too big and hairy to expect speed?

Sure, it's cheap, but the slowness is annoying.

http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2007/02/08/php5-downgrade-completeupgrade...

Dreamhost downgraded its PHP installation and will be re-upgrading it on Feb 20th...should I wait before then to start my Drupal site?