Readyboost=Ram for netbook?

It is listed as "the ultimate guide to tweaks" and does have different headings etc (although i havent read them all), So i guess he was just compiling a list of things you may or may not want to do, and then putting some in groups that help to achieve goal x?

i didnt do it to save capacity, i did it to see if i could run without one, and if it would decrease writes to my ssd, and it makes next to no difference. Having a high spec machine means that all of those "tweaks" do largely nothing lol.

Having a decent amount of knowledge, and good network security > UAC any day of the week. using image back ups (done weekly) also > any virus that might appear. To be honest, I havent even had anything "bad" on this machine since i got it, by bad i mean anything that a simple spybot scan doesnt clean etc.

I dislike the superbar as it moves the icons along the task bar, which means they are in random positions depending on how much I have open. I am trying to get used to it, and im going to give it another few weeks before i make my final decision on which one i can use more effectively




I didnt say I know better? But the point stands, if you have enough ram you do not need a page file. How much is enough ram all depends on what your using your pc for though. If i'm never going to encounter a position where the system has to clear RAM for new data, then there wouldnt be a problem.

The only issue I encountered when disabling my page file (was off for about 2 or 3 weeks) was when i tried to RUN dow2 when chaos rising came out.

My drives werent being thrashed (by the sound/activity lights) any more than normal, it would load stuff when i clicked it/a map was loading etc, but not in between or from alt tabbing.
This could be a case of I dont tend to have many different things open at once though. I tend to either be surfing, or gaming, or working, or w/e but not at the same time.

Whats wrong with experimenting ffs? Try it one day, whats the worst that could happen? You have to change it back and admit you were right/wrong? I got into computing because I find it interesting. I also find it fun to work things out myself rather than just take everything at face value because "someone said so".

Edit: This is the link that actually convinced me to even trying to turn it off, for the first time ever....
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17180569
 
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Ch3m1c4L said:
It is listed as "the ultimate guide to tweaks" and does have different headings etc (although i havent read them all), So i guess he was just compiling a list of things you may or may not want to do, and then putting some in groups that help to achieve goal x?
Click to expand...

Fair enough, I just generally dislike tweak guides, because most of the tweaks that get touted do nothing for performance or are even detrimental.

i didnt do it to save capacity, i did it to see if i could run without one, and if it would decrease writes to my ssd, and it makes next to no difference. Having a high spec machine means that all of those "tweaks" do largely nothing lol.
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The decrease in writes would be minimal since Windows uses paging as a last resort, plus a lot of the stuff that gets paged out is already on the disk, so nothing is written anyway. Some people don't have an issue but they are a minority. The worst part is many people will switch off the pagefile, forget they have done so, then blame the OS when it crashes with their favourite game/application.

The way I see it is on the one hand you have a situation where you might never have a problem with very minimal/zero gain. Or a situation where you will never have a problem and absolutely nothing lost.

Having a decent amount of knowledge, and good network security > UAC any day of the week. using image back ups (done weekly) also > any virus that might appear. To be honest, I havent even had anything "bad" on this machine since i got it, by bad i mean anything that a simple spybot scan doesnt clean etc.
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The whole point of UAC is to move people away from the Always Admin mentality. Fine, you may avoid some nasties just by being vigilant, but at the end of the day if you are giving instant and automatic admin rights to anything that runs without your knowledge it is just plain bad security. You are relying on Anti Virus and Anti-Spyware - which are not infallible - to sort out the problem after the malware has gotten to your PC. With UAC enabled you stand a good chance of stopping it before it even has a chance. In an ideal, and hopefully not too distant, world no one would run as an Administrator account full time. UAC or not.

I dislike the superbar as it moves the icons along the task bar, which means they are in random positions depending on how much I have open. I am trying to get used to it, and im going to give it another few weeks before i make my final decision on which one i can use more effectively
Click to expand...
All my icons stay where I put them, regardless of how many programs I have running... Are you sure you are using the superbar?

My taskbar with just a few things open
superbar_stuff_not_running.png


My taskbar with lots of things open

superbar_stuff_running.png


The icons haven't moved. They're all exactly where I put them :confused:
 
With files that are already on the disk, if they are not on the same disc as the page file, do they get paged into the page file? Since I have my OS and core apps on my SSD, and nothing else.

i dont want my task bar "windows", like lots of firefox windows etc, all on one button, i like them seperate. So I cant have it where it just puts a layer on the picture. It increases it in size to be a "normal" task bar entry. Does that make sense?

Quick launch was a nice combination of both, but i cant find an option to do it in the same way on win7, if im being thick and missing something, then fair enough :)

UAC is a hinderince, as it running in a non admin mode, for me at least. I dont want to have to enter my password every single time I want to do anything that makes a change to my pc, or have to click "yes i do want to do the thing i just told you to do". I used it for a bit on vista (after I had built the machine etc) and it just annoyed the hell out of me. I am not only relying on anti virus etc, as i take image back ups, i keep one that is from when i built my machine and got it all working, and then 4 (a months worth) so i can easily roll back a week or two.

I do understand its reasoning and usefulness, but I want to have full control over my, without the OS trying to simplify everything. The only times (on previous machines) I have ever got anything particularly bad, was my own, either drunken or not, stupid fault. Generally porn related lol.
 
An SSD drive would make a bloody good page file store. It is bizarre that you go and buy an expensive SSD then disable the page file? WTF?

It would make more sense to disable ReadyBoost if you've got an SSD, and keep Superfetch enabled. But in any case, having both enabled is still better than disabling any of them (and that includes if you've got an SSD).

There will come a time when UAC is compulsory. And every Windows user runs as a Standard User. It could even be Windows 8. My advice is that if you don't like UAC now, then tough.. you need to get used to it because it won't be long before you have no choice.
 
I'm with Nathan, people are too keen to turn off Windows services and components without doing their own testing to see if it's best. Guides on the internet are frequently wrong (as is advice on forums), I'd rather test of myself than go on the hearsay of some random ego-tripping internet blogger.

SSDs are ideal for page files, why do people think we use to put them on the fastest HDD or a seperate partition?!
 
A lot of people, and somewhat understandably, want to save every last megabyte on their SSD. Some only have 32 or 40GB to play with.

A lot of the same people believe their SSD is some fragile orchid and must not be subjected to any writes lest it wither away. Fact is most SSDs will last years under normal use so there is absolutely nothing to be worried about.

I wonder if there is correlation between those who think their SSD is one write away from oblivion and those who can't stand to see their £200 RAM being actually used by Superfetch :D
 
Halfmad said:
I'm with Nathan, people are too keen to turn off Windows services and components without doing their own testing to see if it's best. Guides on the internet are frequently wrong (as is advice on forums), I'd rather test of myself than go on the hearsay of some random ego-tripping internet blogger.

SSDs are ideal for page files, why do people think we use to put them on the fastest HDD or a seperate partition?!
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thats what i was doing? As in not taking what they said as 100% correct, but i thought id test out some different scenarios?

@NathanE, so if you can't run as an admin user, how would you ever configure anything that requires admin rights? If it was "compulsory" how would you get different security levels for use on a domain? I'm pretty sure that they arent going to stop you being able to be an admin.....on the machine that you administrate....That just wouldnt make sense?
 
Ch3m1c4L said:
@NathanE, so if you can't run as an admin user, how would you ever configure anything that requires admin rights? If it was "compulsory" how would you get different security levels for use on a domain? I'm pretty sure that they arent going to stop you being able to be an admin.....on the machine that you administrate....That just wouldnt make sense?
Click to expand...

I think you are missing his point.

He said UAC would be compulsory not that it would be impossible to have admin rights.
 
UAC is a convenient shortcut to allowing you to perform administrative tasks without switching users, as MS knows a lot of software out there needs admin rights to run.

With UAC MS are basically saying if you are triggering UAC with your software, you are doing it wrong. For too long developers have been lazy and just assumed everyone is running as an Admin [blame XP for this!]. Software should only require admin rights during installation or if that software is designed to make changes to your system. At any other time there is absolutely zero reason for program to require admin rights to run.

You should run as a standard account all the time, choosing to run as an admin only when you need to perform admin tasks. If MS remove UAC, you are forced into this - unless you want to be absolutely insane and run as the Administrator full time.

Removing UAC will not remove your ability to do admin tasks, it just removes the shortcut to switching users.
 
SiriusB said:
UAC is a convenient shortcut to allowing you to perform administrative tasks without switching users, as MS knows a lot of software out there needs admin rights to run.

With UAC MS are basically saying if you are triggering UAC with your software, you are doing it wrong. For too long developers have been lazy and just assumed everyone is running as an Admin [blame XP for this!]. Software should only require admin rights during installation or if that software is designed to make changes to your system. At any other time there is absolutely zero reason for program to require admin rights to run.

You should run as a standard account all the time, choosing to run as an admin only when you need to perform admin tasks. If MS remove UAC, you are forced into this - unless you want to be absolutely insane and run as the Administrator full time.

Removing UAC will not remove your ability to do admin tasks, it just removes the shortcut to switching users.
Click to expand...

thanks for explaining that, makes sense now. the fact that UAC comes on when on an admin account is what annoys me. Its not going to convince me to turn it on, or stop running as an admin though. I like to be able to do everything i want to, when i want to. I tend to play around A LOT with stuff, so its much more convenient for me to be an admin. I dont use admin accounts on my media centre, or laptop though, since once they are set up I tend to leave them alone. Don't mind logging in as/running as admin on the occasional time i need to for them.
 
Well just to join the debate :p when i had win 7 i was admin and turned off UAC

Now i am thinking of putting win 7 on my netbook and i was wondering if its necessary to have win 7 starter (optimized for netbook?) or can i install any version?
 
Ch3m1c4L said:
UAC is a hinderince, as it running in a non admin mode, for me at least. I dont want to have to enter my password every single time I want to do anything that makes a change to my pc, or have to click "yes i do want to do the thing i just told you to do". I used it for a bit on vista (after I had built the machine etc) and it just annoyed the hell out of me. I am not only relying on anti virus etc, as i take image back ups, i keep one that is from when i built my machine and got it all working, and then 4 (a months worth) so i can easily roll back a week or two.
Click to expand...

A lot of people tend to use this argument against User Account Control when it makes no sense and indicates a misunderstanding of why User Account Control was introduced and how it works. There is no white-list nor black-list hard coded into the operating system which determines when a user launches a particular application or carries out a certain Windows task, whether or not that particular operation will bring up an elevation dialog or not. The system is not second guessing everything you are trying to do. The only reason you are receiving an elevation dialog is because the operation you are doing is requesting administrator rights. In a lot of cases, with regards to applications, even though they request administrator rights, there is absolutely no need for that particular application to need administrator rights and will be able to run correctly with standard user rights.

However, since Windows has had a long history with people running as administrators, software developers have written their applications assuming they would have administrator rights by default. When Windows Vista was introduced and due to the implementation of User Account Control, whilst the default account is still an administrator (which is now more commonly referred to as a Protected Administrator), you are running in a mode called Administrator Approval Mode. When you log in, you are given two tokens, one with standard user rights and the other with administrator rights. The standard user token is used by default. Since everyone will be running either in Administrator Approval Mode or as a true standard user, software developers will not have administrator rights by default. This then gets them to start writing their applications so they work correctly with standard user rights, the primary purpose of User Account Control.

If you have a read of this paper here, you can see User Account Control is successfully changing the way software developers write their applications. I have quoted the section which I am referring too at the bottom of this post.

Regarding the elevation dialogs, they are there purely as a convenience to the user. Its possible for everyone to use a standard user account for their day to day tasks (which everyone should be doing anyway) and then switch to an administrator account when they wish to do any operations which need administrator rights and then switch back. However, the inconvenience of doing so would be too high and once they have switched a couple of times, the vast majority of users would soon get fed up of having to constantly switch accounts and would just end up staying in the administrator account all the time.

However, due to the elevation dialogs, if the user is running in a standard user account, whenever they need to do an administrative operation, they will receive the Over The Shoulder elevation dialog which will ask them to enter the credentials of the administrator account to carry out that administrative operation. Similarly, when the user is running as a Protected Administrator, they will receive the consent elevation dialog which they would simply need to accept to continue with that operation.

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Engineering Windows 7 said:
Impact on the software ecosystem:

UAC has resulted in a radical reduction in the number of applications that unnecessarily require admin privileges, which is something we think improves the overall quality of software and reduces the risks inherent in software on a machine which requires full administrative access to the system.

In the first several months after Vista was available for use, people were experiencing a UAC prompt in 50% of their “sessions” - a session is everything that happens from logon to logoff or within 24 hours. Furthermore, there were 775,312 unique applications (note: this shows the volume of unique software that Windows supports!) producing prompts (note that installers and the application itself are not counted as the same program.) This seems large, and it is since much of the software ecosystem unnecessarily required admin privileges to run. As the ecosystem has updated their software, far fewer applications are requiring admin privileges. Customer Experience Improvement Program data from August 2008 indicates the number of applications and tasks generating a prompt has declined from 775,312 to 168,149.

Picture-1.png


Figure 2. Number of unique applications and tasks creating UAC prompts.

This reduction means more programs work well for Standard Users without prompting every time they run or accidentally changing an administrative or system setting. In addition, we also expect that as people use their machines longer they are installing new software or configuring Windows settings less frequently, which results in fewer prompts, or conversely when a machine is new that is when there is unusually high activity with respect to administrative needs. Customer Experience Improvement Program data indicates that the number of sessions with one or more UAC prompts has declined from 50% to 33% of sessions with Vista SP1.

Picture-1-1.png


Figure 3. Percentage of sessions with prompts over time.
Click to expand...

Engineering Windows 7
 
Readyboost is basically moving your paging file to a USB stick because it is faster than putting it on a HDD. It's still WAY slower than actual RAM.

I will look forward to technologies like Readyboost when USB 3.0 become mainstream, it may become an actual alternative.
 
ReadyBoost actually serves as a superfast random I/O cache. But yes, page file I/O is one of the key things it improves.
 
I recently put a spare 2gb pen drive in my parents 2gb ram Windows 7 machine. Might be placebo but I noticed a slight increase in performance. It booted, loaded apps and shut down marginally faster. For no outlay at all (spare drive) it was 100% worth it, I actually then purchased an 8gb drive for my own PC as the improvements pleasantly surprised me.

If you tried it in Vista then try again in 7 as it is much better.
 
Gundog48 said:
Readyboost is basically moving your paging file to a USB stick because it is faster than putting it on a HDD. It's still WAY slower than actual RAM.

I will look forward to technologies like Readyboost when USB 3.0 become mainstream, it may become an actual alternative.
Click to expand...

I've used it on my netbook to attempt to increase speed as its currently upgraded to the maximum supported amount of RAM. I wouldn't consider it as an alternative to upgrading RAM however.
 
Bottom line, if you're running windows on a pc, laptop or netbook and have a spare usb slot make use of it. Having said that if you have a laptop/netbook with 1/2gb then a decent udb drive will give you a performance boost you will notice, it's not a substitute for ram but it will improve system speed which considering how cheap they are (last one i used came free with a HD), there's very little to loose at all.

Or use an ssd as the boot disk :)

“Windows 7 has improved the capabilities of ReadyBoost over Windows Vista, including: Maximum cache size has been increased from 4GB to 32GB. Note that to utilize a memory cache of greater than 4GB, the flash drive needs to be formatted with either a exFAT or NTFS file system. Support for up to 8 ReadyBoost devices simultaneously on the PC. Windows Vista only supported a single ReadyBoost device per PC. The ReadyBoost cache can be used during boot to improve startup performance,” revealed a member of the Global Escalation Services.

Windows 7, just as its precursors, will turn to the hard drive to store data, once it can no longer stash it into the physical memory. If the RAM is saturated, storing and accessing data from a USB device is much faster than when the system turns to traditional HDDs, therefore the performance boost. This is, however, not valid for newer computers with Solid State Drives, as there is no difference between the SDD and the USB device in terms of accessibility speed.

“The best option, if possible, is to upgrade the physical RAM to increase system performance. However, when this isn't an option or if you have some extra space on a flash drive that you are not using, ReadyBoost is there as an alternative. A prime example of where ReadyBoost shines are Windows 7 netbooks that only have 1GB of RAM installed. Having a ReadyBoost cache of 2-4 GB will have a noticeable effect on system performance,”
Click to expand...
 
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