Will everything going on with pagerank and now you cannot even comment on blogger blogs without having an account which royally ticks me off as well as others it is not easy but actually wise to go ahead and transfer over to your own domain and web hosting now. Web Hosting Services are so affordable and most come with so many incentives that really the only thing stopping you would be the funds upfront and/or the lack of knowledge. Now the funds I can understand but the knowledge should not be an excuse. When setting up a Web Hosting package you have the availability of the companies customer service to help you set everything up. If that does not suit you, then there are plenty of friends or acquaintances that can gladly help you set it up as well. It is quite easy so might as well go ahead and give yourself an early Christmas present.
Finding the right plan could be a challenge though especially if you have no idea how much traffic or actual disk space you are using. With blogger blogs there is no telling on space that I could potentially see since they host it and traffic could be measured if you put in some code to track that. Right now Network Solutions is offering a free domain purchase with any of their hosting packages so you would not even have to worry about purchasing that separately but just come up with a domain name that is not already taken.
I noticed that too, and I found it VERY annoying! I was finally able to comment on a Blogspot blog by using the “other” category, but it took me awhile and one thing none of us has is sapre time. There are lots of options now, so it’s good, as you say, to shop around.