Heh! , I was starting to get worried there ...
Even if you didn't need it, it still will make things go faster,as it has no need to resolve.
If you had just
www.projecteq.net in the host, and no ip, then that was your delay in the ping. What might have been happening is, windows first tried the host file, and since it was null, might have tried an ip of "0" first. then went and resolved elsewhere.