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Hi all,
I recently bought a Toshiba Satellite P100-160 that came with 1gb RAM installed and after downloading some Widgets discovered that it was using nearly 70% of memory whilst doing very little and was really not as fast as i was expecting.
Now the Tosh only comes with 2 memory slots so to upgrade to 2gb would of meant having to buy 2 x 1gb of memory and having 1gb in 2x 512mb of no use and it was going to be expensive. I remembered reading that Vista could use a USB memory key to memory boost so yesterday in PC world bought an extra 1gb for £9.99 unfortunately on plugging it in and trying it came back as not compatible so went back today and spoke to their Tech Guys and found a USB Memory key that said Boost Ready 2GB for £29.99 and all i can say is wow the system is a lot faster and all for £29.99 that has to be the cheapest way of adding Ram to a Computer running Vista and well worth the spend IMO. I just hope some here will find this of use as it really is just so much cheaper than buying normal Ram chips to fit in.
Marc
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Nokia N95, 2gb Sandisk, Fring Shure EC2g
Nokia E61 2gb Sandisk, Fring, Tom Tom 6
Dogmanns N95 Blog Experience @
http://dogmann.vox.com/[ This Message was edited by: Dogmann on 2007-07-11 14:37 ]
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Posted: 2007-07-11 15:36:55
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Nice tip!
I haven't tried it myself yet since hardly any of my customers have upgraded to Vista yet, but I'll definitely bear it in mind. I had heard about it before, but was concerned about possible speed issues. I still wouldn't advise using USB memory with Vista for serious gaming or such like but for general use it sounds promising.
Thanks!
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Posted: 2007-07-11 15:58:46
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I gave it a go a couple of weeks ago with my 1GB USB memory key but it wasn't compatible. Might just buy something bigger...
If only it worked with my 80GB iPod... That would be great!
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Posted: 2007-07-11 17:13:57
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i'm going to do that with me pc now
a boost from 4 gigs of ram to 6 gigs of ram
edit: i still prefere me lappy
tho i have a dual boot on me lappy and pc so some of my programs that dont work on vista i'll not be able to use the extra ram
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[ This Message was edited by: paul101 on 2007-07-11 16:19 ]
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Posted: 2007-07-11 17:17:27
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You have to remember that USB flash drives only offer about 1/4th of the performance of RAM chips. There just no way they can be a replacement for RAM.
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Posted: 2007-07-11 19:06:20
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It doesnt use the usb memory as your ram....it merely uses it as the cache for superfetch as the usb drives are much faster than hdd.
Superfetch in simple terms is a vista technology where it over time analyzes your usage and moves your most used programs to locations on the hard disk from where they can load the fastest.
I found absolutely no change on using readyboost on a pc with 1gb ram however i've read it works very well on systemjs with 512mb.
Also from experience most run of the mill usb sticks arent fast enough to support this....better get some sandisk or comparable sticks.
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Posted: 2007-07-11 19:41:11
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So has anyone actually played games or done any video encoding using Vista with a USB memory stick? I don't care about the bits, bytes and Megahertz, I need to know if it is, in real life use, a viable alternative to RAM modules? Of course it's not going to be as good as RAM modules, but how badly (or goodly!) does it shape up in comparison?
@Clank
So am I right in saying that Vista doesn't use USB memory as RAM at all then? It's just a much glorified HDD cache?
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Read my cartoon strips on B3ta.com[ This Message was edited by: Cycovision on 2007-07-11 19:01 ]
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Posted: 2007-07-11 19:55:56
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Hi all
Remember you can't just use any USB key it's needs to be boost ready and of course i realise it is not the same as actually fitting additional RAM and but it is so much cheaper. So far i have noticed a really big improvement, especially speed wise Web pages are loading much faster now and before it was showing 75% memory in use now it is showing just over 50% in use. I would of bought a only 1gb but they didn't have any that were boost ready but i still think it was £30 well spent.
Marc
_________________
Nokia N95, 2gb Sandisk, Fring Shure EC2g
Nokia E61 2gb Sandisk, Fring, Tom Tom 6
Dogmanns N95 Blog Experience @
http://dogmann.vox.com/[ This Message was edited by: Dogmann on 2007-07-11 19:52 ]
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Posted: 2007-07-11 20:49:45
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@cyco i've gamed/encoded videos on it and found no difference personally.
In fact with my single core amd 3200+ it practically made my system unusable for almost 10 min after boot up as the cpu shuttled between 0 and 100% usage as the cache was being rebuild.
When i moved to dual core there were no negatives but still no positives either.
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Posted: 2007-07-12 05:07:34
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Dogman, any USB drive thats 256MB or above is boost ready. The fact that companies write boost ready on the cover is just a gimmick.
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Posted: 2007-07-12 09:25:54
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