Connecting to the closest server will decrease your rejected (stale) work by a tiny bit. If it takes you from 0.11% to 0.06% rejected work then you will be earning 0.05% more bitcoins.

Currently both US servers are in the eastern US.

I'd be interested in hearing some stats from people who have tried the different servers for a day or two each and compared reject ratios.

Regarding mining with old USB sticks: the minimum difficulty is currently 64. You can't get below that. But mining will work fine. It will not make your USB sticks fail and need to reset. It will not cause lower actual hashrates. If those things happen then it's for other reasons. What it WILL do is make the website's estimated hashrates very inaccurate. The website will often show you at zero hashrate. Mining still works and your hashrate in the shifts should be closer to reality: https://bitminter.com/shifts (make sure you are logged in to be able to see your hashrate in shifts)


New work from the server is normal. But how often do you get disconnected? Did you try us2.bitminter.com:3333 and eu1.bitminter.com:3333 and do you get a more stable connection there?