Ok Here is my 3 cents.
As fare as the hard reset? Its good voodoo, so why not. However it makes no sense to me why it would do somehting different, unless their was some failure in the initial flash, a 0 became a 1
I agree I have gotten results from many ROMS that seem to be quite different than what other people are reporting, or maybe I'm picky. I have always cooked my ROM using the PPC Kitchen without fail but, I am having difficulties getting a build that does not have some major performance issues. The sole source of performance issues seem to be running anything other than the stock TF3D in my case
I sure like some of the other variants that strip out SPRINT's stuff.
I have settled on nueROM (
http://www.nuerom.com/BlogEngine/ ) and my most satisfying results have been using his kitchen files. The donation has been worth it, I have used the neuApps and was glad to have contributed. For the most part the UI is responsive with just under 1 second max lag, usually when closing apps. TF3D once it has been used and everything is in cache is like BUTTER. I don't let apps close and I rarely actually exit an application.
If you read around you can find many good tips for improving the performance.
However, my current ROM is the stock 216 build of nueROM, no tweaks at all. The only downside is it is not setup how I like but the performance RULEZ! Just don't reset the phone a lot, it runs better the longer I use it, to a point.
Scott