Readyboost=Ram for netbook?

Ch3m1c4L said:
SSD > ready boost yea?

I noticed no difference using ready boost and not using ready boost on vista, but then again letting it pre fetch and stuff with 8gb of ram negated the need, and microsoft had said it wasn't worth using it if you already ahd more than 4gb of ram as it wouldn't get used much.

now I've got an ssd as well i see no point in it. But you have made me want to go and get a netbook, so i can use my 4gb readyboost usb key....got thats purchasing the wrong way round lol
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I have 8GB with a 4GB ReadyBoost drive and can see using Performance Monitor that my ReadyBoost gets used a surprising amount. Pretty much every time I reopen an application that had been minimised for a while the ReadyBoost sees a huge spike in activity.

The one time that my ReadyBoost drive got dislodged from the back of the PC I noticed almost immediately that something was wrong because my PC wasn't as smooth. It took me 2 weeks to figure out it was the ReadyBoost because I had forgot about it. But needless to say, I respect it a lot more since then.
 
lol, i ahte that sort of issue. I noticed a difference in snappyness etc between 2,4, 6, and 8 gb but i didnt notice with and without the readyboost, but i didnt look at performance figures or anything. Might notice it now ive turned of superfetch etc on my win7 install. To be honest though, at the time I was nly using my pc for surfing/gaming so i doubt it would make too much difference in that. (was formatting a lot and ocing etc so didnt have a lot of apps installed etc).
 
I find that 1GB of RAM on my netbook is fine for normal use. If you need more I can only imagine you're trying to use the machine for tasks most likely beyond its capabilities. You'll also see a drop in battery life with extra memory from what I've read.

Thanks again to Fire Wizard for clearing up the readyboost debate. I remember when Vista was new and it was being asked every other day!
 
Well when i play Football Manager 2010 and have a few chrome tabs open it lags a little....so i was just wondering if readyboost would help with this but thanks to Fire Wizards explaination i now know that it doesnt do anything.....
 
Why is that mate? he clearly states what readyboost etc is and what it does etc and yeh i said it wrong i meant that from his explanation i know that its not a substitute for ram...
 
Ill probably get slated for suggesting this on the windows forum but if you are after speed you could try Ubuntu Netbook Remix - its very fast on 1gb netbooks and is good enough for most of the stuff that most netbook users are after..
 
I was using UNR, but it ate too much battery life compared to XP. I gained a couple of hours with XP, which was too much to ignore, though UNR was very nice indeed. However, setting things up like two finger scrolling, video, power management, wireless are all a lot more difficult and oblique in ubuntu if you're used to windows. I'm not saying it's impossible, but you need to learn it somewhat. It was faster than XP though.
 
Fire Wizard said:
ReadyBoost is no substitute for RAM as already been said. 1GB of RAM these days is a very low amount and you should defiantly see a nice improvement by upgrading to 2GB. This in conjunction with using ReadyBoost should see you along quite nicely.
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alexhull24 said:
I find that 1GB of RAM on my netbook is fine for normal use. If you need more I can only imagine you're trying to use the machine for tasks most likely beyond its capabilities. You'll also see a drop in battery life with extra memory from what I've read.
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Actually, I would tend to agree. 1GB should really be fine for a netbook as NathanE has also stated. All though, if Biz.Kid09 is using it as his main machine and will be for a while, providing he can get an additional 1GB for a reasonable price, it may well be worth while.

masterluke said:
Ill probably get slated for suggesting this on the windows forum but if you are after speed you could try Ubuntu Netbook Remix - its very fast on 1gb netbooks and is good enough for most of the stuff that most netbook users are after..
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PermaBan - All in favor? :p

SiriusB said:
Ch3m1c4L said:
Might notice it now ive turned of superfetch etc on my win7 install.
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Why would you do that?
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Indeed. SuperFetch is one of the best features which was introduced into Windows Vista and is also in Windows 7 obviously.
 
cause its largely pointless since ive got an ssd, so dont suffer from seek time latency. I just followed the guide to optimize win 7 performance while running an ocz ssd, on the ocz forums, by some guy lol.
 
I noticed no difference using a 4Gb Sandisk cruzer for readyboost, then tried a 16Gb version I had been using to keep ISOs on. Made a noticable difference, but took a while to settle in. The easiest way to prove this is simply for me to take it out, Windows 7 doesn't feel as responsive :)

I'm definately in the Readyboost fan club, but you do need a decent size of drive and a reasonably fast one to make decent use of it.
 
thats why i scanned it, did some, didnt change a lto of the services as it was like "meh, i might need that one day, and last time i turned off some printer thing it took me ages to work out why it WOULDNT JUST FSKING WORK" when i tried to print about a year later lol.

Also only now reading the end of the guide. Another place says to put super fetch to 2 instead of 0 or 3, which means it caches boot files (1 does apps, 3 does evereything).

I've turned it back on and connected back up my readyboost drive, will see if it makes a difference to anything i do.
 
A lot of those tweaks are just plain stupid. Why would you turn off the pagefile? That is just asking for trouble down the line. Why would you disable most/all the GUI features? Disable UAC? Oh dear.

They also talk about enabling TRIM and disabling Defrag - these should be switched off automatically when Windows 7 detects an SSD. I certainly didn't need to do anything on my system.
 
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"Should be", it isnt always apperently, and also if you just copy your install acrross you need to do more of them (i didnt do that, i fresh installed).

UAC can suck my balls to be honest. I hate it more than I hate the removal of "normal" quick launch, which almost made me throw my win7 cd out the window. Personally, I like the GUI features, but I know a lot of people who dont like them, and if your limited in GPU power, then turning them off will make a difference in speed, also trning off transition effects means everything is instant instead of transitioning.

Page file isnt really needed if you have enough ram, although certain programs wont run without one. Its well annoying playing DOW 2 that makes you have a 1.5gb page file, and then seeing that its only using 37% of your ram...its like, just load it all into ram plx?
 
Switching off GUI features because you don't like them is fine. But that list of so called performance tweaks seems to just throw everything in there like it makes a huge difference.

The new Windows 7 Superbar is > normal Quick Launch. I don't know why you would dislike it, but to each their own. UAC can be the difference between a nasty getting told to politely go away or there being a fresh post in here by someone complaining they have a virus.

Again, turning off the pagefile is bad. No ifs, ands or buts. You might get lucky and never run into a problem. The vast majority of people will run into all sorts of problems since Windows is effectively unable to manage RAM the way it was designed. If you want to save capacity your SSD you can move the pagefile to a non-SSD HDD.
 
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