Measuring a hosting company before making the switch

How can I measure speed and up-time?

[Jeremy_H]

I'm thinking of switching hosting companies.

I have a small static one page website. The only thing on the page are links to a handful PDF documents (about 15K each), a little embedded JavaScript, and a few highly optimized GIFs.

I figure why stay with my current hosting company and pay for features I don't use?

Pretty much, what's important to me is server speed, server up-time, high data transfer allotments, and price.

I see a large name hosting company that charges a very nice price that allows for allotment of data transfer. I'm further drawn to this company because I already use them for domain name registration.

Before making a switch, how can I test their server speed and up-time?

Also, are there other things I should be looking for too?

Thanks!

[Webwork]

I doubt you can get a reliable measure in any type of test since the server you "test" might have X websites hosted on it today and 3xX next week.

I'd consider the hardware and any performance guarantees they might offer.

Unless it's a dubious reseller I'd work with the assumption that the host, just like you, has an interest in optimizing their servers for fast loads and that the host would take issue with any website that is unduly taxing resources.

This tends to be a "you get what you pay for" realm.