Well... he's right and he's wrong. There's not going to be a "best" pool, they're all going to differ slightly, and you'll have to make your own choice. I know I commented on ABC in the ARS thread, but figured I'd
farm for more posts contribute some more of my valuable information here
The way I look at it, all of the pools are "active", save ARS. I mean, really, it's not like there's "dead" pools out there. Which always amused the hell out of me; WHO THE HELL WAS MINING AT ARS AFTER BT LEFT? I mean, there were a few 10k+ GH people still mining there. WTF? Are you people dense, or is your botnet really hard to change targets or something? ARS was good, ARS was one of the first big, good PPS pools, but my God people, move your damn miners. It's not like BT even posts anymore. I was honestly concerned he'd just outright vanish and we'd be out any coins we've mined. I can't imagine still having 10k GH/s pointed to a dead pool, Jesus.
Anyways, I digress. Here, however, is my opinion on the pools. Take this with a gigantic grain of salt. Do not try to argue with me, because frankly I'm *SURE* I'm wrong on some points, but you're going to need to do your own research anyways, eh?
YourBTC is closing. Too bad, so sad, at least he told us.
To me, Deepbit and BTCGuild and Slush are some huge, monolithic behemoths swallowing up the entire universe. Clearly, other people disagree with me. Though I do have to question if most people don't just use them due to their "size", and don't really look into it that deeply. They're not the cheapest, they're not the most stable, they're the biggest DDOS/pool hopper targets, and their interfaces aren't that unique/special/awesome.
OZCOIN is Australian. LOL AUSTRALIAN. I have them as a backup pool, since I figure if we (the pools located in parts of the world that don't have sex with kangaroos) all get DDOSed, OZCOIN might still be up. Please note: I'm kidding, OZCOIN, I love you, and have nothing against you.
EMC is just screaming to be screwed over with that whole Paypal thing. I can see that ending incredibly poorly. Plus, at, what, sub 200GH/s, the payout routine would bother the hell out of me.
ABCPool.co: This is where I'm currently at, mostly because, frankly, I'm lazy, easily bored, and just want my X amount of BTC a day. I then turn my X amount of BTC a day into X amount of dollars and spend the dollars on Yuengling. With ABCPool.co, I know I can buy X amount of Yuengling, drink my problems away, and forget about another week of life. I don't care how many coins we've found, I don't take glee in "Beating" anyone else in stats (because all it means is I bought more 5830s from Amazon than you, nothing else. It's not a skill, it's a money pit. Congrats, we've pissed away money on old video cards). I don't care what coins I found. I don't care how I compare to every other person in the galaxy. I just want my X amount of BTC a day, a stable server, and payouts. And ABC delivers that. I don't have to THINK. I just CLICK, and turn away. There's no surprises. There's no "oh, my heavens, we didn't find a coin for 12 hours, now I'm sad in the pants". If and when they add Namecoin mining, for that 1% bonus or whatever, that'd be even better.
But, each to their own, clearly.