Mailing the story:
Soft updates in OpenBSD
I decided to start using Soft Updates on my FFS partitions in OpenBSD. I'm still running version 4.4 of the Unix-like OS (and am still waiting for my CDs to arrive and for time to figure out how to do the upgrade to 4.5). According to the OpenBSD FAQ, using soft updates on a Unix-style Fast File System improves disk performance.