WordPress MU

I waited for WPMU for so long and I get impatient :)
So after a while, I succeeded in installing multiple single wordpress 1.5 where user can register and it copy all the files and creates all the tables needed for them. But this means 9 tables in database are needed for each user. Which means if I want to give 10 users there would be 90 tables in a single database. 100 users=900 tables! OMG. Not a good solution. Well, out of curiosity, I just want to know how slim can the tables and the files be for the future WPMU . In other words, how much space can be save, how many tables can be reduced and how much speed can be regain when creating, posting in WPMU.

Same number of tables, but only one installation of WPMU so no copying of code, just html templates.

Amazing html templates...i like the sound of it. That must increase the speed of registration and save a hell lot of space. One question though, how many tables can a database actually holds..i mean the maximum number of tables. I believe the size of database depends on the space of the hard drive allocated for it but let say for a school with 500 students, can a database holds 4500 tables. What about the speed when talking to the database with 4500 tables?If let say the future WPMU can give unlimited user registration on one database with 9 tables per user, what are the limitations on the number of tables that can be made in a database so that the speed is decent and manageable. Just curious.

"How long is a piece of string?"
1. Not everyone will be updating their blogs at the same time.
2. Only a small number will keep their blogs updated.
3. We do a lot of caching.
4. 500 users is easy.

If the machine is slow, then there's a bottleneck. Throw enough CPU and memory at the problem and it'll go away.

I think for *nix and using MySQL, there is a limitation number of tables per database.. may be 65K tables. Because 1 directory is consist of max 65K files/directories.

If you want to create unlimited number of user you can try hashing directory models (like Qmail do),
eg. domain : blog.com
user : test
directory : /blog_root/t/e/s/test/
database : t
table : wp_t_xxxxxx