ReadyBoost was a technology set up in Vista to allow only but the fastest USB flash drives to be used as a substitute for the swap space on your hard drive. Microsoft claims that ReadyBoost will make your PC “feel” faster as it is supposed to reduce program load times and generally make the lot run faster. This is truer on low memory systems with only 512MB to 1GB of RAM. Systems with 1.5GB to 2GB will see little to no performance boost.

TechWorld with the help of PC World put ReadyBoost to the test with only one question to answer, how much does ReadyBoost speed up a system. Overall system speed increases were minimal to say the least; I can’t even attribute a percentage number to it because it’s so low.

ReadyBoost did manage to speed up application load time by 4% to 6%, on average. ReadyBoost is yet another one of Microsoft’s marketing tools in Vista that does almost nothing for high-memory modern computers though it might help those with low-memory but only if it has a USB 2.0 port and not every flash drive supports ReadyBoost, when in doubt look for the “Vista Certified” or “ReadyBoot enabled” logos on your flash drive.

It comes down to this if your computer has at least 1.5GB of memory, ReadyBoost will do you little good, you’re better off getting 2GB of real memory as opposed to a ReadyBoost flash drive.

Due to the fast read/write speeds of ReadyBoost flash drives they are excellent for transferring and moving large files around. If you only use it for ReadyBoost you are doing yourself a disservice and maybe even if you are using ReadyBoost at all.

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Entry was posted on Sunday, May 20th, 2007 at 4:02 am under Microsoft, Vista.  Print This Post

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