If you are looking for more stability, you need a VPS account. And make sure that it's a type of VPS that gives you a guaranteed percentage of CPU. Make sure you ask how many accounts are allocated per server.

The term "reseller account" really is meaningless in terms of technology. That is, "reseller account" doesn't imply anything at all about the underlying technology, so shouldn't be a consideration to you. Most VPS accounts, are, in fact, also "reseller accounts".

It means that they give you a control panel that makes it convenient to set up permissions, accounting, and some sort of resource allocation for sub-accounts, and (usually) gives you the right to sell access to the sub-accounts to third parties. (But of course you can use them for your own use as well.)

there seems to be a significant price difference between vps and reseller accounts, does this mean anything significant?

for instance, the host i am currently looking at has plans as follows:
reselling
Disk Space 10GB
Bandwidth 200GB
Monthly Price $24.99
Annual Price $269.89

vps
Centos 4
Equal share CPU
1GB Burst RAM
384MB RAM guaranteed
10GB Disk Space
150GB Monthly Transfer
2 IP numbers
Power Panel
cPanel/WHM (latest edition)
Fantastico De-Luxe
Clientexec
Your own name servers
Unlimited domains
$44.50 per month

and another host i was checking out:
reseller
Disk Space: 5,000 MB
Traffic: 40,000 MB
125 GB
$10 per month

vps:
CPU equal share
Min RAM 128 MB
Burst RAM 512 MB
Disk space 7 GB
Bandwidth 125 GB
Monthly $20

my current host, i was thinking about going to them for a VPS until they told me it's an additional $50 to have the system security managed (their support isn't really all that good... or even ok. it sucks! i couldn't imaging having to pay an additional $50 to have them look after that for me..) --- they told me it's confidential as to how many other users will be housed on the vps box i would be on, so i just assume all hosts are on that same boat.

I'd go with the $44/mo VPS. The 128M memory on the $20/mo VPS is light on RAM for MySQL. The prices seem about right - you might do a bit better, but this is in the range I would expect.

The "reseller" accounts are not much different than what you have now - shared hosting. The only real difference is the control panel that allows you to divvy things up and hand out accounts to others.

they told me it's confidential as to how many other users will be housed on the vps box i would be on, so i just assume all hosts are on that same boat.

I'd run the other way - that's nonsense! Any good VPS seller will tell you how many VPSs are housed on the box, as well as the details of the box (CPU, etc.)

My VPS provider houses 8 VPSs on each box, a dual-Opteron machine (I forget the mHz...).

It should be a dedicated server, because your main concern is not being victim of other user actions.
A VPS is almost as good too, because even though you still share the computer, each environment is(should be) totally isolated from each other.

very little resources

The VPS should suffice, however, you will *still* be on a machine with other VPS customers. Although the VPS is "enveloped" and a certain amount of CPU/bandwidth is guaranteed, if one of the other VPS customers does something to crash the system it's still a crash. But it's a lot less likely. You also don't get root access with most VPS plans, so if you don't do command-line tasks, this will not be an issue.

If you have minimal resources being used, a VPS will probably work out very well for you.

Alos see if they have an annual fee - that $44 can go down to $35-$39 if you pay for the whole year, it's worth it.

Although the VPS is "enveloped" and a certain amount of CPU/bandwidth is guaranteed, if one of the other VPS customers does something to crash the system it's still a crash.

Depends on the VPS technology being used. This is true for some older VPS technology. While I can't comment on other technologies, I know this is not the case for Xen virtualization. A Xen virtual server can crash, and the rest of the servers are not affected. You will normally have root access, and you can reboot your own server at will.

You also don't get root access with most VPS plans

See above.

thank you for all of the info everyone!

i've gone with the $44 plan and await my welcome email. :)