So if you're like me, and new to crypto-currencies, the choice of pools to join is pretty overwhelming and confusing. Just one look at the alt-currency forum and you'll see dozens of threads for people's various pools for various currencies. There are also just as many posts and threads accusing various pools of being "scams" or other such fun. So I decided we should probably have a central-ish thread for pool information.
Personally, I'm mining Litecoin and Feathercoin. I tend to stick to one pool at a time (mostly because I only know of a few and go with the website that's built most competently) so I'm absolutely willing to see what else is out there and share my own experience.
For LTC, I use
http://www.give-me-ltc.com. I do really like it, despite 2% pool fee. What I'm a huge fan of is their huge range of mirrors and the fact they use really common ports (like 80 for the donors server, 8080, 443, etc) which allows me to keep mining with my laptop while I'm on my school's campus. My campus only has 80, 8080, 443 and one other port open on the WiFi so that's really convenient.
For FTC I'm using
http://feathercoin.is-a-geek.com. Its also pretty nice, however automatic payout seems to be broken. It doesn't use the nice ports that Give-Me-LTC does so I'm more limited as to miners. I've just been using my desktop to mine FTC and its worked out pretty well. But, as I said, automatic payment seems to be broken. I have it set to pay at 1.1 FTC but my account is sitting there with nearly 3 FTC. I'm really reluctant to manual pay and lose 0.1 FTC. I also have a huge pile (4600+) shares yet to be paid. Not that I have a real solid grasp on what that MEANS but still.
I would recommend avoiding
http://fc.ltcoin.net, Dig Feathercoin. First pool I used for FTC and I'm stuck with 2 FTC on that account, and it seems that there is no manual payout. There's a button for it, but its gray and not clickable. So I'm kinda curious how to get my money off that and in my wallet.
So post your favorite pools, the currency it mines, why you love it, etc! Or general advice for new users new to mining. I'll add an effort-post later about mining software for scrypt based coins.
