- the plugin merges and compresses all CSS/JS static files to decrease HTTP requests and improve page load time
- the plugin regularly optimizes database tables and does it automatically on schedule
- the plugin caches up to 30% of database queries within predefined lifetime which makes your page load faster
also, do you care to explain the last two listed? if you enable the mysql query cache then all this comes for free. what exactly the plugin is doing when it is optimizing the database tables?...