I've been with Hughesnet for about a year and half now. As someone who was used to real internet, it *is* painful. However, when you compare it to dial-up it's infinitely better. If you use the internet for practically anything these days, you do *not* want dial-up. Web 2.0 is murderously slow over dial-up, and most every popular site is chocked full of Web 2.0 features. I find the service worthwhile for what it is, but that said, if I had a choice other than satellite, I would take it in a heartbeat.
The latency thing is a bit of a pain as well (your latency will be around 1 second, when other connections are more in line with say 10 milliseconds). It causes some web-based services to think you've lost connection, which means that they won't work at all--however that's not a super common issue, but as mentioned earlier, don't think you'll be well positioned to use real time, data dense services such as video conferencing, VOIP, Skype, or the like.
As for the talk about Hughesnet not being crystal clear about their speeds and such, a couple of days ago I got a post card stating that I was apparently a part of some class action lawsuit about that, their fair access policy, and early termination fees--already they are undergoing some changes in how they do business (they were bought out like a year ago I believe), and thus far all of these policy changes have been for the better.
Like what led me to go with Hughesnet over WB was when I was looking into things, WB gave you a monthly download allowance and charged you overages at a certain point (not sure if this is the case now). Hughesnet gives you a daily download allowance. They've recently changed things up to where if you have some of your bucket you've not used for one day, it carries over to the next for a maximum of twice your daily allowance before you get throttled. So, I've got the lowest level package that gives me 250MB/day before they slow me down. This means that if I don't use it for one day, the next day I can use 500MB without getting throttled. Since I've only got 250MB/day, it will never be more than 500MB, so if I don't use it for a week, when I use it again, I can just use 500MB (twice my 250MB limit) and not 250 for each day I didn't use it. There is also a five hour free download period in the mornings.
Now, I've also noticed that they've been playing around with the limits here of late. Sometimes it shows as if I have 300MB, sometimes 500MB--but when they play with it like this it's always you getting more. They'll never drop you below the plan you're on.
There's a useful extension for Chrome/Chromium that can help you keep track of your usage.
Some helpful tips for using satellite internet:
Access the mobile version of websites--typically you can just stick a "wap.", "m.", or "mobile." in front of a URL (e.g., wap.yahoo.com ). Oh, if you use the wap, use that in place of www, not with www, so "www.wap.yahoo.com" is not the right way, but "wap.yahoo.com" is. This will give you a much more streamlined version of the website, optimized for mobile devices. You won't necessarily have all of the features, but the main functionality of the site should be retained.
Find a good download manager and learn how to use it. Schedule downloads for the free access period. There are dozens of quality ones out there, but one will probably be the best fit for you.
Don't stream media/carefully plan when and what you stream. Streaming eats up a ton of bandwidth, video moreso than audio. You might consider using services that allow you to download videos from sites like youtube in conjunction with your download manager to still be able to watch what you want to, but not get kicked in the teeth from going over your allocated amount.
Resize pictures you send. Digicams these days make ridiculously large images. A 10MP camera's pictures will usually range around 1.5-2.8MB each. Uploads for Hughesnet don't affect your download limit, but your latency and relatively slow upload speed can make uploading a bunch of large pictures a pain. By that same note, downloading pictures can add up surprisingly quickly.
Disable features like Google's search while you type. That 1 second lag becomes ridiculous when you're trying to type something, google keeps trying to respond to what you type letter by letter, and then some 30 seconds after you finish, it finally has gotten everything you typed.
If you go with hughesnet, save this URL: 192.168.0.1/stlui/fs/advanced/index.html This gives you access to the advanced configuration settings of your modem (I'm assuming that the modem will assign itself this IP--don't see why it shouldn't but if it does just take all of the stuff after the IP, copy it, and paste it after your modem's IP). In general, do *not* muck around in here unless you know precisely what you're doing. However, there is one thing that will be of service to you: It let's you turn off Turbopages. Turbopages is just Hughesnet's web accelerator service, but sometimes it becomes annoyingly buggy and I've found the best way to deal with it is just to kill it.
If you can, I suggest buying the modem/satellite and not leasing them. In the long run, assuming it doesn't get hit by lightning, it's much cheaper.
Hrm...one last thing: unless you've got unlimited data on your cell phone plan, I would highly recommend you avoid using that as your primary source of a web connection. It's a great thing to have as a supplemental connection, but for the most part, you'll be amazingly limited in what you can do, and you might well end up paying a lot more for a lot more limited service (mobile providers don't have free download periods, and I frequently go well above the nominal 7.5GB of usage allotted to me by my 250MB/day plan in a month without hardly ever getting throttled just by using the system intelligently).
Now, if you do have existing mobile service, you're probably better off trying that for a month or two before you commit to satellite internet because your needs could well be very different from mine.