USB Flash disk to help speed up old laptop

[Pleiades]

Hi, I come across a lot of ancient (i.e. 4/5 yr old) laptops that people want to throw away because they're so slow. Because the only thing on them that can usually be upgraded is the memory, I'd obviously suggest that at first. Unfortunately old Sdram Dimms are expensive (if available at all) so was just wondering whether using a USB memory stick device might help. I was thinking of installing one as an external disk and making Windows use it as its swap drive - would that be of any benefit at all?

Cheers for any advice!

[fredered]

Depending on what version of windows you are using it would need to be quite big, but the best bet would probably just to give it a go and see what happens. If however there is little hard drive activity at a time when you want the laptop to be faster then the swap file isn't slowing you so your suggestion would do little.

Also if your old laptops are USB 1 then I doubt that it would work.

[Jonny M]

It will be pointless as they are likely to be USB1.

[CrazyMonkey]

It will be pointless as they are likely to be USB1.

Yes 4-5 year old ones most likely are. Saying that a pc i have (4 years old) has USB 2.0

[Pleiades]

Some of the laptops have 128 - 192MB and do seem to thrash the disk a lot. The last couple I saw did have USB2 so will give it a try next time. I just read about Vista Readyboost on Zdnet and I wondered why it can't be applied to older OSs . I can't post the url as haven't made enough posts!

[jimbouk]

How about CF->IDE adapter and a 1GB CF card? Win98's got to run quick on that. Else get a 2GB card and try WinFLP (if you can find it...)

[Pleiades]

Blimey, WinFLP sounds a good idea, never heard of it before! Pity they don't distribute it, guess it's not much of a money-spinner compared to Vista. Thx 4 the pointer tho, will try and find a copy somehow...

[dannyboy16]

i have an old laptop and too speed it up i put a usb memory stick in the back and made it page to it which made a big improvment

[thetuxedo]

A CF card is normally faster than a USB stick (and will last longer too), but you can often get cheap memory for old laptops on ebay, that's what I would be looking at first.