Tech Tip #1: ReadyBoost for Windows Vista & 7

One option that Windows Vista and 7 offers that is overlook is ReadyBoost.  So what is ReadyBoost?

ReadyBoost uses flash memory (e.g. a USB thumb drive or an SD card) to improve performance. The way it works is, the more memory your PC has, the more program data or SuperFetch data can reside in it.

SuperFetch predicts which applications you will run next and preloads all of the necessary data into memory. It also does that with boot files. This helps prevent accessing the slower hard disk too often. The result? Programs launch much quicker, and Windows boots faster.

Hit the break to find out more about ReadyBoost

Your system memory is being over used by the OS and all the applications and software that you have running in the background of your PC.  This sometimes tends to slow down your computer, if not by alot.  So sometimes it may be unbearable when it takes minutes to just jumpstart a program.

So this is where ReadyBoost comes in!  This feature uses either a USB flash drive or even an SD Flash card to store all of Windows memory manager.  So instead of the memory acessing your hard disk, it will just use your flash memory to store all the data, but the good thing is that this data is continuing being copied.  So if you were to uplug the USB thumb drive or the SD Flash card, no data is lost or corrupted.

So how to start ReadyBoost?
All you need to do is insert a flash drive into your computer and wait for the AutoPlay dialog to popup.  There on that menu, you should see an option to of 'Speed up my system'.  Click on that option and from there another menu will pop up.

On Windows Vita, you click on the option 'Use this device' (Note: Windows Vista has a limitation of only 4gbs).  If your using Windows 7, click on the option 'Dedicate this device to ReadyBoost (Note: Windows 7 has no limitations, so it's recommend to us an 8GB flash drive and use either option of NTFS or exFat).

After all of that, just hit 'ok' and all of Windows memory will be pass alonged to the flash drive. (Note: If you do get an error reading 'This device does not have the required performace...', then your bascially out of luck).

Who is this highly recommend for?
Users who have 512mb or 1gb of memory.  Even if you have higher memory, you may not notice a difference in performance.

Please understand that ReadyBoost isn't a replacement for RAM.  If you wish to have better performance for your PC, then it is recommend to upgrade your PC with more RAM.  ReadyBoost is just a free alternative.