Blogging: Technical Irritations

For non-bloggers, this post may be a bit meaningless but I'm getting really frustrated with some technical aspects of blogging.  Haloscan is a particular annoyance. It sometimes registers comments i.e. counts them and sometimes it doesn't. On other occasions comments disappear off into the ether. I suppose this is just a product of using free third party software. I'd welcome any insight. Also Blogger has its own frustrations. I'm thinking of switching hosts. When I come back from my trip I'll do some homework...