I would avoid Dreamhost for dedicated hosting. I have several sites hosted using their shared and and a few using their dedicated services. The dedicated hosting has been really painful, with frequent configuration glitches caused by the differences in setup to their shared stuff (as well as 12-48 hour response times). I suspect they spend more time on their shared customers as my vhosting accounts with them do *far* better.

I have had good experiences with both Peer1 and Rackspace: each offers great support and monitoring, as well as solid networks. They do require a bit more elbow grease, however, which can be good or bad (depending what you want to do).