Hello daniel,
thanks for paying such close attention. I'll be glad to explain the points you've doubts on.
1. An "at least" is ALWAYS an "at least". i believe you know what i mean. I've seen people who dont even care for uptime at all! They are just flattered by the technical jargon like bandwidth, ssl, ftp, fantastico bla bla bla.
2. Well I would like to disagree on this part. What if your 2 mb website (2 mb?? u gotta be kidding me) gets a few million hits every month? If you're thinking about changing servers "after" getting famous, just cut that idea. It's never advisable to change your site from server to server. And why not to be prepared from the beginning?
5. Well, it's a matter of personal preference to be honest. I would never want to wait for several hours for an answer by the support ticket staff. And if you've more questions, wait for another few hours!! Why not just grab a host with live chat system and get your service right away?
7. YES, a search engine. For your information, some of the hosts, including my previous one
, i wont name them obviously, DO NOT allow search engine scripts like google custom search or ajax search in their servers. And eventually your blog posts are pretty much a task to find.
Hope i've clarified your doubts :-)