I like your quoted quote Eric!

Very VERY few static sites around. It's one of the reasons that many of the older hosts are having problems as you can no longer cram 800-1500 accounts on a single machine and expect good results. I miss those days

I've just not yet been able to find a clustered solution that is more cost effective than regular shared hosting. By the time you pay for the extra CPU or bandwidth etc, you may as well be on a dedicated server.