Linode has always worked very well for me. You do have to have some basic Linux sysadmin skills, but they have good documentation that should get you on your way, awesome support and it's way cheaper than Heroku or Gondor. So my advice would be: Linode combined with EC2 for storage
walterk does have a point... but it's pretty ok... i bought a "crumpler" keyboard protector with it, which can also be used to wipe the screen and "grease" of the surface
Over here in Holland, Macs are definitely becoming more and more popular. Not sure about the rest of europe though, but my guess is that it's the same all over europe...