Also, looking at those numbers, event machine was using more than 3x the processor time:
> (17.97+8.42) / 241.45
=> 0.10929799130254712
> (76.58+5.03) / 243.25
=> 0.3354984583761562
So even if, for example, it was 5% better in wall clock time (unproven), it's costing you ~3x in processor time.
