3
Also don't forget that staic items within blocks can also be set...
Which some times is far better, as you know your News won't change regular and so your pages loads faster.
If you can cache something, that is loaded a lot, (unsure if this help, yet think so) as if you have say 1000 vistors and there is a block... that would then be called 1000 times from the database each time...
If it is then set on a small cache, then it will be only be called the once from the database on the time you set it on and the others from the cache, so again speeding things up.
I think someone wrote a really good guide like wolfactory i think it was...I will have a look...brb