I have never owned a raq before, but do most people use them for shared hosting or do they use them for a specific centralized domain/account which really is too much for a shared account but doesnt need a lot of CPU power?

By 'most people' you mean most people *here* I'm guessing? I don't know what the numbers are for either here or in general, but I'd say that a decent number use them for both, and would have to guess that more people use them for one or two busy sites than for hosting (just the law of averages).

i use it to host 1 large site, and a few smaller ones on the side. works quite well i might add.

I was just wondering the market that the raq corners...so i posted it here :)

Raq are easier to manage and it is also a good start for newbie to learn more about managing a server.

We are currently using a raq4 to host 39 sites that are on avg medium in size. We are upgrading our connection to a T1 to be able to host more sites. The only problem we've had with our cobalt is it was running short of RAM. Once we upgraded that to 384mb we've had no problems. We probally won't upgrade to another server until we hit at least half full on our current cobalt. We've done price comparisons with the cobalt v.s. a windows based server and while the cost of the cobalt may scare newcomers the out-of-site out-of-mind factor comes up every time.