Host ping times important ?

[Ry@n]

Hi all,

I understand that UK hosts are better than USA in respect of ping times, but how important is this ?

In your opinion, what is a "decent enough" ping time to a site you would view from the UK ?

Its just im worried that my host im using has rubbish ping times which affects loading times (am i right?)

Thanks

 

[Ry@n]

Thank you very much for the detailed replies

Another question id like to ask is, i have a script (oscommerce) installed on my host which adds a mysql databse aswell. If i was to decide to change hosts for a better more expensive one, is it simple to transfer mysql and files/scripts to the new host?

Ry