Hi i'm new to this forum. Just found out about readyboost today and have been researching it a bit today but wanted to find out more before I went in on it...

I'm running Windows07 on a new laptop with 4GB internal memory. I wanted to see if it was worth my while purchasing a SDHC flash card for a little more speed. I was really interested after hearing about it but don't know many people who do this.

Some more direct questions I had were...
-Does any type of flash card work, or does it need to be an SD card?
-I've seen complaints from some that only 4GB can be used, and sometimes less, but the individual who enlightened me told me to purchase an 8GB flash drive for the best product, is this true?
-If i leave the flashcard in almost always but have to eject it from time to time, will this effect anything, and will I have to set it up for readyboost everytime I insert it?

Here's the scoop from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...eadyboost.aspx. The flash drive I leave in most of the time is not usable for readyboost. Probably too full, but not all are suitable for the task. SD cards can also be used.

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EVGA 650i mobo with Intel e8400 Core 2 Duo
4 gigs OCZ 800 ddr2 ram and 160 gig sata hard drive
EVGA GTS 250 SC - Windows 7
See my test at http://www.pcpitstop.com/betapit/sec.asp?conid=23014579

Few comments, USB flash memory works.
4 Gig is a limit for 32 big op systems. It is not 4 gig on a flash drive, and 4 gig of onboard, it is 4 Gig total. So if you have a comp with 2 gig ram and a 16gig flash drive on a 32 big OS (Vista or 7), you can use only 2 gig of flash memory for ready boost.
A 64 bit Os can address 128gig of RAM. So if you had Vista 64 or 7-64 you can have a large flash drive attached to a maxed out motherboard.

XP does not have ready boost, even though it has a 64 bit version. Vista and 7 have readyboost.

I have looked for a 3rd party version to use on XP.... no luck in my search so far.

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I'm here, you may now make your next two wishes.

Beat Me, Whip Me, Make Me Use Windows!!

Every Piece of Electronic Equipment runs on a finite amount of smoke. The systems are normally very efficient at reclaiming the smoke and recycling it, however, should you do something to let the smoke out, your system will become useless.

SAVE THE SMOKE !!

New PC :
New: Phenom 9500 Quad 2.2, 4gb ram XP Pro 64-bit (Sata 0), XP Pro 32 bit (sata 1), 40 eide HDD (music), Pioneer Blu-Ray Burner, HP Multidisk CD-RW/DVD-Rom, 2x250 Seagate HDD's, ATI Radeon 3870, Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe WiFi-AP

Old PC:
P4 1.5GHz, 768 Ram, hda-80Gb (80Ubuntu), DVD R/RW

Am I right in saying that ReadyBoost is a lot faster then using Virtual RAM?
It'll obviously not be no where near as fast as using normal RAM... So I thought that the idea of using ReadyBoost was for use only if needed, not to be used all the time?


Jam

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Right. It should only be used as swap space, not standard ram. It would be better than using a hard drive page file.

__________________
I'm here, you may now make your next two wishes.

Beat Me, Whip Me, Make Me Use Windows!!

Every Piece of Electronic Equipment runs on a finite amount of smoke. The systems are normally very efficient at reclaiming the smoke and recycling it, however, should you do something to let the smoke out, your system will become useless.

SAVE THE SMOKE !!

New PC :
New: Phenom 9500 Quad 2.2, 4gb ram XP Pro 64-bit (Sata 0), XP Pro 32 bit (sata 1), 40 eide HDD (music), Pioneer Blu-Ray Burner, HP Multidisk CD-RW/DVD-Rom, 2x250 Seagate HDD's, ATI Radeon 3870, Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe WiFi-AP

Old PC:
P4 1.5GHz, 768 Ram, hda-80Gb (80Ubuntu), DVD R/RW

Yea I get that regular RAM is faster and all that such, but it wont hurt me to always have a memory card in can it? A guy from Geek Squad mentioned this all to me which got me intrigued to research it more...

I purchased a 4GB SDHC memory card to try it out. However, as I restart my computer or shut it down it no longer keeps the card slotted as ReadyBoost and I have to keep redefing it so. Is there a way to make it permanent ReadyBoost feature or no, or should I not be trying to do this anyway?

not to my knowledge (you cannot make readyboost permanent) Due to the nature of UFD's. They are removable, and making a link like that for memory will cause blue screening if you moved the device even to a different port while the machine was turned off.

__________________
I'm here, you may now make your next two wishes.

Beat Me, Whip Me, Make Me Use Windows!!

Every Piece of Electronic Equipment runs on a finite amount of smoke. The systems are normally very efficient at reclaiming the smoke and recycling it, however, should you do something to let the smoke out, your system will become useless.

SAVE THE SMOKE !!

New PC :
New: Phenom 9500 Quad 2.2, 4gb ram XP Pro 64-bit (Sata 0), XP Pro 32 bit (sata 1), 40 eide HDD (music), Pioneer Blu-Ray Burner, HP Multidisk CD-RW/DVD-Rom, 2x250 Seagate HDD's, ATI Radeon 3870, Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe WiFi-AP

Old PC:
P4 1.5GHz, 768 Ram, hda-80Gb (80Ubuntu), DVD R/RW

I don't know much about windows 7 , but i think that it is something between Windows XP and Windows VISTA. I hope that this time Microsoft have something better to offer.

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Regards,
Merry J
http://www.eco-inkjets.com

7 is what vista was supposed to be. much better than vista. it still uses the reworked vista networking stack.. and i have run into issues with HP causing the system to think i have local connectivity, but no connection beyond the router. I believe it is HP. But that is besides the point.

Readyboost is handy if you need more ram onthe fly, but should not be relied on. Remember, UFD's have an expected life of 1 million re-writes. that can go a lot quicker if you are using it for make-shift RAM.

__________________
I'm here, you may now make your next two wishes.

Beat Me, Whip Me, Make Me Use Windows!!

Every Piece of Electronic Equipment runs on a finite amount of smoke. The systems are normally very efficient at reclaiming the smoke and recycling it, however, should you do something to let the smoke out, your system will become useless.

SAVE THE SMOKE !!

New PC :
New: Phenom 9500 Quad 2.2, 4gb ram XP Pro 64-bit (Sata 0), XP Pro 32 bit (sata 1), 40 eide HDD (music), Pioneer Blu-Ray Burner, HP Multidisk CD-RW/DVD-Rom, 2x250 Seagate HDD's, ATI Radeon 3870, Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe WiFi-AP

Old PC:
P4 1.5GHz, 768 Ram, hda-80Gb (80Ubuntu), DVD R/RW