Windows Vista has many complaints of being slow for the amount of memory it requires. Can you speed it up? Sure you can…

One of the things that I’ve not done with Windows Vista is try to speed it up using the ReadyBoost technology that comes with it. What is ReadyBoost? Essentially you use a USB memory stick as a “cache”, which is of course faster than a disk cache (in access time), and unlike regular memory (which loses it’s contents when you shut the PC down), the contents of USB flash used as memory are immediately available when a PC boots up – making it more “ready” (and giving it a ‘boost’, doh!).

If you thinking that you could use any old memory stick you had lying around – that’s not the case. You have to have 256MB or more free space, so those old 128MB flash drives you got for free at the technology fair or with a spindle or CDRom’s aren’t going to cut it. Also (like regular memory and hard drives) believe it or not different USB sticks have different speeds. You need a memory stick that has at least 1.75MB per second read time and 512KB write time. What – you didn’t save the original blister pack from your USB stick with the specs? You might be able to get that information online at the manufacturer’s web site, or maybe online from the place you bought it. If not (or if you’re buying a new memory stick for this purpose), just be sure to get one that says “<b>Enhanced for Readyboost</b>”, and you’ll know it’s got the specs you need.

Believe it or not, you could use just about anything (you can plug in USB) for this technique, including SD Cards and things you plug in a card reader, like MMC Cards, MS Cards, Sony Memory Sticks, etc – as long as they meet the read/write requirements. So how does Readyboost work? When you plugin a new usb stick (or card reader), you’ll get a dialog box asking you what you want to do (open folder, run, Autoplay, etc.), and you want to choose “Speed up my System with Readyboost”.

Windows Vista isn’t just going to let you use memory that is insufficient or incompatible, it’s going to do a benchmark first. If the memory meets requirements after the benchmark, Readyboost will create a file on your drive or card called “ReadyBoost.sfcache”. That’s it! Your Windows Vista system should be running faster now! Think about how much easier this is than buying more memory for your notebook or PC. You can get a 1 or 2GB flash stick for under $20 online, and that could dramatically increase the speed of your computer!