considering a Host--is distance an issue?

[anomaly]

I'm thinking of buying a domain and some space for my webpage.
I've done some reading up on choosing a host but one question I have is;
Is location important? Should I choose one geographically close to me or does it matter? I'm in California and the one I am considering, Primenet Hosting, is in South Carolina, 2000'ish miles away.
Will the distance affect my FTP speeds?

I don't imagine that any of my uploads will be more than 5mb's a piece, after the initial upload.

[mairving]

It shouldn't really matter that much unless you wanted to visit them in person. It is really hard to tell where some hosts are anyway. They may list their address in SC but have servers in Maryland since quite a few hosts are resellers. Good responsive Customer Service and 99.9% uptime are the most important things.

[glc]

That's not even a consideration for me - I'm in Illinois and my host is in Connecticut. I doubt you would notice any difference at all due to that issue alone - other issues are far more important, such as bandwidth and user load.

[mc2phat]

I'm planning on acquiring hosting services in a few months. My main concern (besides uptime & bandwidth)is to get a service that will be there for good. I'm open to suggestions.

[anomaly]

I'm wondering if Pow Web would be a good host. Their prices are good.
PCMech has them as an ad link, so since I trust PCMech I wonder if I can trust Pow Web.
Does PCMech care who they advertise for?

[glc]

phat - I mentioned webaxxs.net in my reply to anomaly's other post - I would think they will be around for the long haul because they are a reseller for OLM - a big player in the hosting world. They reply to e-mails within a few hours and also actually answer the phone.

[mc2phat]

Thanks. I didn't read anomaly's other post.