Oh, I'm not in any way suggesting that this is what the article is talking about. I'm specifically curious about how cheap shared hosting delivers (or fails to deliver) in a price / performance comparison to one of those "plug on the wall" servers. Not trying to be snarky here; I'm actually hoping for a legitimate response, as I have no experience with them (but they sound kind of interesting).
I don't think those are private servers, and they are fairly poor on the storage/$ scale. But $25/year is a lower entry point then most, and if it is enough then good.
http://www.asmallorange.com/hosting/shared/