Next mostly makes it so pulling the site down and loading the page is snappier without us having to try particularly hard to get it that way. It isn't totally effortless - we've got some tailored pieces in our pipeline, but Next "off the shelf" does an excellent job already, and the work they've done makes customizations easy to implement and maintain.

I'm glad to hear you like it! Seriously, it makes it way more interesting knowing people are enjoying it. Every little tweak and improvement to performance is worth it when people are getting something out of it.