I ran older slower miners on Triplemining from time to time if one of my pools was having bad luck, or I would flip miners I had problems with over to see if it was the miner or the pool I was on to verify their hash rates. I never had an issue with them.

I think part of their problem was, and I'll admit I did it too, was you'd use the Gambler's Fallacy logic. You'd see the hours creeping up to where they'd hit blocks in the past and you'd jump ship for there. Other people would do the same. Hash rate would climb and low and behold they'd hit a block. The last round they were running you saw the hash rate creep up every single day the hour meter went higher. The last round went so long I even had a person on my mini pool I hadn't seen in forever.

The problem with using that logic is people would jump ship after they hit a block in recent times as well, only to return later when it had been long since one was found. Unfortunately I didn't get to see how many jumped after they hit the first yesterday since I was at work, I hope they put the stats up, if not I'll have a reasonable idea with the final payout though. The second block just shortly after just proves that timing it seemed like a good idea but really wasn't (and I'm sure they planned on pulling the plug after the first and didn't expect to get two in short succession, the 3 hour or so round for the second block was the shortest I'd seen in as long as I can recall) had the people just continued mining there all along more blocks would have been found.

Unlike a large pool where the hash rate is so high it would seem predictable, the small size made you think you could chance it.

Other than that though their software worked pretty well. I think if they or one of the mini pool operators marketed the lottery and got people who weren't mining to dig out old usb block erupters, or tried to attract hobbyists running smaller hash rate miners, they could have gotten the hash rate into territory to keep it viable.

I too would like to see some of their features elsewhere, or someone buy the software if they sell it.