I had a 1&1 Root Server III and their customer support is absolutely terrible. I switched my RS3 site to the top end VPS at powervps.com for half the cost and never looked back. (This was for a site other than sevenstring.org, which has over a million posts and passes 20 million views a month). Both sites now run on PowerVPS and they are absolutely outstanding. Best host I've had in ~8 years running assorted sires.

1&1 used to be excellent, but I think they either outsourced most of their clients or downsized. If you check around the hosting forums, there are a lot of people who've left them in the last year or so because the service went so far downhill.

.2c