Solo mining provides
1) No operator fees
2) All transaction fees (which have been consistently rising since Bitcoin started)
3) Less risk from pool owner trust
4) Less risk from pool downtime and DDOS attacks
At a cost of
1) More variance (who cares when you have significant hash power)
and
2) No merged mining. This is important because, according to Dustcoin, Namecoin currently adds 6.42% (
BTC60.6 or $7410.17 a day) to 21TH of mining.
That's not chump change; perhaps Friedcat can buy merged mining software from Dr. Haribo or doublec.
good point they could also fund dr haribo to a better server and hash more on bit minter