Upgradding from 1.3 to 1.7, should I just start over

I have been reading about the problems people have had upgrading from 1.3-1.4-1.5.... etc. And I am nervous about doing it. The 'don't fix it if it isn't broken' scenario - Although I want some of the upgrades.

With the problems people who have updated have been having it almost seems like I may be better off to just start my website all over again from scratch. So, those of you on Godaddy and have upgraded, could you answer some questions for me? Thanks!
1) Would this be a good time to move from godaddy to another host?
2) Would you do the update sequence again? Or, would it be less hassle to just recreate your entire site?
3) Do you have some upgrade pointers?
4) If I upgrade will I need to re-enter all of my custom text on notifications and on the tables?
I have searched the forum and the web and have seen a couple postings with pointers.
I am surprised Godaddy doesn't offer an automatic upgrade like they offer an automatic installation of nopcommerce. I would talk to their support people, but all I get are canned responses asking for screenshots of the problem. Which have nothing to do with what I am asking. I don't think godaddy can speak english.
Thanks!

The first thing you should note is that GoDaddy does NOT support ASP.NET 4.0 so the highest you could go is 1.60. I dropped them for Arvixe and upgraded to 1.70 and it is a day and night differance. I am just now about to give 1.80 a spin!

Daniel

Godaddy now supports .NET 4.0. If you are running shared hosting you need to upgrade to Grid hosting which my understanding is like cloud computing...

@bbells

upgrading your database is really not to much effort - MAKE SURE YOU BACK IT UP FIRST

if you did not make any changes to the database structure then any custom information you entered into the database will be fine ( as will any settings you have)

the next stage is to install the latest version of nopcommerce (1.8)  and connect it to your database


It's well worth it  - 1.8  is streets ahead of 1.3

- best regards, hayden