Slow CIFS/SMB speeds on OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Lots of complaints about how slow accessing Windows/Samba shares via Mavericks.  I've tried a couple of different things, but only found one that seems to restore SMB to a semblance of its former speed.  Thankfully its really easy.

In 'Connect to Server' when you specify the server by: smb://servername/share, instead do this: smb://servername:139/share. 

While I've not tried to analyze a network trace, I suspect that forcing the port bypasses some sort of smb version negotiation process.  But that's just a guess.

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS in Virtualbox SLOOOOOWWWWWW

I've been trying to install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS in Virtualbox 4.2.4 for about a week now.  It would install eventually, but it was slow to do so, and almost unbearable to actually try to use.  Someone mentioned that if you had multiple CPUs configured for the VM, change it to one.  I had only one CPU assigned, so I changed it to two, and restarted my install.  It completed in less than five minutes.  Moral, if your having performance issues installing or using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, make sure you're using more than one CPU.