Are you asking for a list as a counter argument? A list of ones to look at? Or a list of companies that match my personal criteria?
Rackspace, HP Cloud, VPS.NET, Gandi, RIMU, Slicehost (back in the day), Webbynode, Liquidweb, StormOnDemand (though a part of Liquidweb), Burst.net, PowerVPS, FDC Servers, ...
List could go on. I usually look for whether they have an established history, a site that doesn't look like a crappy overused template, a real physical address, WHOIS info on the domain, Google them and research, whether they have a real status site, maybe lookup if they have an ARIN number, traceroute to their site, etc.
Why do a lot of these providers differentiate between OpenVZ and KVM? Usually there's a significant pricing difference, but little in the way of explanation as to why.
KVM is stronger isolation, its a hardware layer virtualization. You can (though the provider might not let you) run a custom kernel, etc.
OpenVZ is more OS virtualization, there is less isolation between instances.
OpenVZ usually has "guaranteed CPU/RAM" and "burst CPU/RAM", while KVM always gives you what its assigned. The guaranteed/burst is typically BS. More often these budget providers like OpenVZ because you get greater density, which means more noisy neighbor and taxed resources like disk IO.
Rackspace, HP Cloud, VPS.NET, Gandi, RIMU, Slicehost (back in the day), Webbynode, Liquidweb, StormOnDemand (though a part of Liquidweb), Burst.net, PowerVPS, FDC Servers, ...
List could go on. I usually look for whether they have an established history, a site that doesn't look like a crappy overused template, a real physical address, WHOIS info on the domain, Google them and research, whether they have a real status site, maybe lookup if they have an ARIN number, traceroute to their site, etc.