Interesting points, but I think still having a machine running solo specifically for the variance is a good thing because if I hit I suddenly can afford to buy some new hardware that I would not otherwise have. And if you read before I am a gambler ;-) I used to play online poker for a living now I am doing actual working and looking for a new way “out”.

As an update what I thought was  a 5870 turned out to be a dead card so now I have my 6450 mining on this computer @ 28.5 Mhash/s on a pool. It is the best working machine I have atm so I am thinking of putting this solo and switching all the others to a pool. Right now I am paying $0.08 per KWh and according to my power management software I am using 5.40 KWh per day….. I also have a Quadro 3xxx that is PCIe that may be dead. Worth using if it is not?