Domain names
 

OK, here is a question for all the smart guys out there. What are the best sites to purchase from and host a domain? I would want this both for email service and for website hosting, but I want to make it independent from my ISP.

This is going to sound strange but:

joker.com

They have a good reputation, great prices and good service. A rarity amongst DNS hosters. I and a bunch of my silicon valley friends have been using them for years. (Actually they are a German company, but great US service)

GoDaddy for my domains. Aplus for the hosting. Actually, I host my sites on my own servers, but aplus is the biggest bang for the buck I've found so far.

Godaddy
 

I switched all my domains to godaddy.com a couple years ago. Cheap dns hosting. Cheap email hosting. Cheap web hosting.

YMMV, but they've been very helpful when needed.

Go Daddy is great!

More options just to confuse matters:
www.1and1.com
www.namecheap.com

Another satisfied GoDaddy.com customer here. I have a handful of domains registered with them, and a few hosting accounts... never had a problem, and nothing beats the price.

The ONLY downside so far is that I have run into some limitations with trying to execute a few server side scripts with their budget (aka cheap) hosting accounts, but if you have no need for that level of functionality, then it really doesn't matter.

I started using www.1and1.com a little over a year ago and they are FrontPage enabled. They were in the top 10 when I did my research. If they are not the cheapest, they are close and have given me great service including email.

I have used several and I like yahoo.com.

GoDaddy.com
 

I use godaddy.com. Great service, low price.