I have come a long way in the way I look at hotels, I once had a job that involved 100% travel, the company paid for the hotels, and didn't care what they cost, I normally stayed at high end places. I felt it was important to stay someplace nice, to help relieve stress, and live in a clean comfortable enviorment. The work I do now involves a lot of travel, and the hotels are on my dime, I stay at a different place every night, I work until I am too tired to drive any more, then find the nearest hotel, sometimes they are nice, sometimes they are dumps, as long as they are fairly clean and have a hot shower I am happy.

I have been very surprised by some of the lowend hotels that I have spent a night at, several of them were about $30 a night and were very clean and well kept. I have also been quite disturbed after spending nearly two hundred bucks for a supposedly luxury hotel to get to my room and find that the place would not live up to Motel6's sometimes not so high standards.

ETA: Moral of this story is, if you are going to be in a place far a long time (a month or more), try a couple of places first to find out wich hotel is a good value, if you are only going to be there a day or two base your descision on price and festures you need. I need internet access when I stay at a hotel and have found the less expensive hotels more likely to have high speed connections in the rooms than many of the more expensive places.