Readyboost

[Funkstar]

I'm thinking about getting a eadyboost ExpressCard for my laptop. Anyone used one before?

the only two i can find are from A-Data and Transcend.

What kind of capacity is recomended? I have 2GB ram right now, but wll be moving up to 4GB pretty soon. I don't think i'll be using it for storage as i already have a 120GB and a 250GB drive (instead of the DVD-RW) in here.

Thanks guys

[staffsMike]

If you are upgrading to 4gb of RAM anyway don't bother with the ready boost. It will do very little when the system has 4gb to play with.

[merple]

I havent looked into readyboost much to be honest.
But I was under the impression that it was only marginally useful if you had little ram available.

[Funkstar]

Ok, fair enough.

What about improving battery life?

[merple]

Short of buying a bigger battery pack, I don't think there is too much you can do.
Use fewer usb devices and turn the screen brightness down when you don't need it up and other boring stuff.
Speedstep might get you a few more minutes too.

[aidanjt]

Speedstep can give you as much as an extra hour if you use agressive power management.

[Funkstar]

Yes I know how to reduce the power requirements on a laptop, I've been using one as my main mahine for four or more years.

I just wondered if Readyboost would have a possitive effect on hard drive and swap file usage.

[aidanjt]

Well, using an SSD for readyboost will reduce hitting the pagefile, which means the HDD will not have to spin up, which will save a decent amount of power, although full 2.5" HDD replacement SSD disks will save even more, but they are very pricey.

[usxhe190]

readyboost will not improve battery life in any significant way
nor will it improve performance if you have 2gb or higher ram.

[HSK]

I used it on my laptop (FZ11Z - 2Gb), but to be honest, I didn't really notice a difference.

[SiM]

Readyboost probably adds about 30-40 seconds of battery life...

Readyboost only really does anything if you have 512mb of ram... and if you are running vista with 512mb of ram you need to get your head checked...

Readyboost is as useful as a cpu heatsink made out of chocolate

see this

[Funkstar]

OK, well that saves me £50 then

[this_is_gav]

Readyboost probably adds about 30-40 seconds of battery life...

Readyboost only really does anything if you have 512mb of ram... and if you are running vista with 512mb of ram you need to get your head checked...

Vista x86 works with 512mb RAM better than XP does. x64 I wouldn't want to try though.

[SiM]

Vista x86 works with 512mb RAM better than XP does. x64 I wouldn't want to try though.

Are you sure? Do you mean the cut down version of vista with all the eye candy turned off? Because thats not a fair comparison - you can turn off a load of the effects in XP in Performance settings and XP will be much faster than any Vista, even with 512mb of ram...

[this_is_gav]

Are you sure?

I know it does. I was testing out all our software at work on a 512mb laptop. It's not too fun when it's just been installed, when it's doing all its indexing and caching and so on, but give a few days and it's fine.

Do you mean the cut down version of vista with all the eye candy turned off?

Yes but then I usually disable the graphics in XP too (and the SiS graphics chip wouldn't support Aero Glass anyway).

Most of Vista's performance issues are people judging it before they've let it do its stuff. Its memory management is nothing short of exceptional compared to XP. I always take benchmarks on Vista with a pinch of salt, as you never know what it's doing at any given point, particularly within the first week or 2 of use. That said, I still feel XP is fine 99% of the time, and as such I refuse to install Vista at work (we'll be closing before 2010 anyway, so not too much point in upgrading) except in certain situations.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I also agree that the memory management in Vista is excellent. It also handles larger memory sizes better than XP can.