I do feel like slicehost "must" be overpriced these days, just based on the fact that their prices haven't decreased that I can remember. (At least ~2 years, maybe more?)
Not sure if prgmr is where I'd end up, but can't be all bad when "figlet prgmr.com" was all the time they spent on logo design. ;)
In that time, Linode have consistently increased their offerings at the same price-point and they deploy newer hardware. It seems a little odd to me that Slicehost seem to get so much more love in the hacker community and Linode remains the underdog. Perhaps Slicehost tends to attract more passionate users who market it more effectively to others? If Linode would get their backup service out of beta and clone the Slicehost API I would see little reason to prefer Slicehost.
I'm a long-time Linode customer, and I recently had to make the choice between Linode and Slicehost. I was extremely unimpressed by Slicehost's offerings compared to Linode - with Linode you get so much more bang for the buck, and they even upgraded harddisk space 3 weeks after I signed up for a new server. I can absolutely not understand why Slicehost gets more buzz than Linode.
Their beautiful copy/paste ready articles and fantastic support in their Campfire chat room is what sold me when I started with them. Recently, I moved over to Mosso.
I think Linode really needs to make their website more appealing. I know it shouldn't really matter, since as a customer I would use their slices not their web design skills, but it does. Their site has been getting better, but it still seems like they don't have someone there that gets how to tune a website to increase conversion.
I've moved to their sister product/company Mosso by Rackspace. It's about half the price & billed per hour... but bandwidth is not included. Bandwidth is billed based on usage ... and for low-traffic/new apps, that's a better deal.
