Like a regular hosting account, chosing a dedicated server company is just as important. Your uptime and reliability will almost always depend on the decision to chose a provider.
Yes, having a dedicated server will most definitely allow you more control, but it's also more work and you have to be prepared for that. Are you confident in administrating your own server? If not, start studying and you'll soon find it's not a hard as you intitially thought.
As for recommendations for resellers? I don't have any. For dedicated server I would look into:
http://dialtoneinternet.com (my provider)
http://catalog.com
http://ultraspeedusa.com
http://rackspace.com
http://datapipe.com
http://tera-byte.com
There are many more good dedicated server companies out there.