What can I say? HGST provides an excellent example of how you should NOT be running your web-site.

% http_ping -count 4 -interval 1 "http://www.hitachigst.com/internal-drives/deskstar/deskstar-7k1000d"; date
29131 bytes from http://www.hitachigst.com/internal-drives/deskstar/deskstar-7k1000d: 3544.97 ms (7.376c/3485.42r/52.173d)
29131 bytes from http://www.hitachigst.com/internal-drives/deskstar/deskstar-7k1000d: 3694.24 ms (8.122c/3612.4r/73.713d)
29131 bytes from http://www.hitachigst.com/internal-drives/deskstar/deskstar-7k1000d: 3228.26 ms (7.236c/3160.14r/60.882d)
29131 bytes from http://www.hitachigst.com/internal-drives/deskstar/deskstar-7k1000d: 3626.39 ms (19.465c/3558r/48.926d)

--- http://www.hitachigst.com/internal-drives/deskstar/deskstar-7k1000d http_ping statistics ---
4 fetches started, 4 completed (100%), 0 failures (0%), 0 timeouts (0%)
total    min/avg/max = 3228.26/3523.46/3694.24 ms
connect  min/avg/max = 7.236/10.5497/19.465 ms
response min/avg/max = 3160.14/3453.99/3612.4 ms
data     min/avg/max = 48.926/58.9235/73.713 ms
Sun 15 Jan 2012 19:05:01 PST

3.5s to generate a static 29k web-page? Repeatedly, three and a half seconds? Are they nuts or what? You can certainly notice the slowness as you try to navigate the actual site, so this is not some kind of test artefact.

No, seriously, how can you slow do a static web-site like that? Someone, please explain? The site doesn’t even have any kind of shop or anything. Entirely static!