I've got multiple sites each on their own Basic (shared) plan.  In browsing the Knowledge Base and many of the boards here, I'm left a bit confused.

I feel fully confident with site management (including using cPanel) on a shared plan, but is there anything special I need to consider or learn about managing a site with a dedicated plan that's different from managing it with the basic shared plan?

I've browsed the Knowledge Base and boards here under Dedicated, and to be frank, much of it is french to me.

In short I'm looking for something like "Here's what experienced LP shared plan people need to know before moving to a dedicated plan"

Thank you!

After looking at this all afternoon, my head is spinning.

I'm confident that I'm ok with Storage and Bandwidth, but am more concerned over all the extras I get for free with the cPanel on a Shared Plan that I would not get with Dedicated.

Should that rightly be my biggest concern, do you think?

Also, what about email?  The overview of Dedicated does not mention email accounts.  Is it unlimited, as it is with shared?

I in way over my head on this one 

Based on my experience, Cpanel will get you going to help you understand some of the workings on Linux without sacrificing your e-mail, website, etc. However, if you're like me, you'll eventually get tired of the restrictions of Cpanel and just want to do your own thing.

On dedicated you basically have the entire machine and can do anything that is legal in California. For example you can send out a million e-mails all at once to your self (Don't know why you would but you can do it).

If you have a spare computer lying around (it can be an older model), I would download and install CentOS and get a bit familiar with it and with Webmin.
In my opinion it is more work with a dedicated server but with that work you would get so much more freedom.
I'm looking for LP to increase the HD size fairly soon- I mean it's hard to find 80Gb disks any more- it seems like they start at around 100-200Gb.

Although some things need updated on this article, the following is the most important to read to transition from shared to dedicated:

http://desk.lunarpages.com/faq.php?do=article&articleid=470

There are many differences between the two, and the article broaches the major ones.

I might also suggest VPS as the goal after shared before going dedicated. VPS is similar to dedicated in that you have SSH access and can install what you would like, but you are still sharing the server with others (you are on your own node, so your PHP version and other components are controlled by you for any changes you want to make).