[svandamme]

i think for 1500 bucks, you can buy a lot of hardware, software and bandwith

maintaining it is another story , especially if you want hands off

if you have a geek in the family , that could make a difference, but if you have to outsource actual server maintenance, you'll loose all the gains you made by going dedicated
you can go a long way in making it hassle free by buying redundant hardware, failure over stuff and what not, but that's not cheap either...and that in itself won't set the thing up for you, design it from the ground up to do what hostmysite does

Sounds to me you should find another hosting place, and make a deal that takes in account the volume of sites you need running, or maybe just threaten hostmysite, that you'll be going elsewhere if they don't trim the fat of your bill...