To my old laptop.
I was considering getting a new laptop as the Dell 1318 I use is getting long in the tooth. Nothing is wrong with it, but compared to newer laptops it seems sluggish.
I decided to give readyboost a try and used put a spare 4GB micro SD into an SD adapter and run it as a dedicated readyboost cache. Responsiveness improved a bit and programs loaded a bit faster, but it was only a class 2 card and just cracked the read/write speeds required by Win 7.
Best Buy had a sale a few weeks ago on all their San Disk cards so I picked up an Ultra class 6 8GB SDHC card. I can now for certain say that Readyboost has made a significant improvement in the responsiveness of the system. The machine has a Pentium Dual Core (cut down FSB and cache version of a Core 2 Duo) and 4GB of RAM. The HDD however is only a 5400rpm.
Monitoring the Readyboost cache access for a week showed that the system is regularly hitting the SD card for retrievals particularly when starting programs and performing other routine operations I use the system for. I honestly didn't expect much if any of an improvement as the conventional wisdom is that if you already have 4GB of RAM it Readyboost won't make any noticeable impact. I was, however, wrong in my assumptions and in believing the conventional wisdom regarding RAM capacity and Readyboost benefit.
For $15 I can't complain about the significant improvement in responsiveness and am now going to hold off on a new laptop for at least another 18 months or so. I've still got the Core 2 Duo desktop with 8GB RAM I built in 2008 that is overclocked to 3.1GHz for more strenuous use (video editing).
I was considering getting a new laptop as the Dell 1318 I use is getting long in the tooth. Nothing is wrong with it, but compared to newer laptops it seems sluggish.
I decided to give readyboost a try and used put a spare 4GB micro SD into an SD adapter and run it as a dedicated readyboost cache. Responsiveness improved a bit and programs loaded a bit faster, but it was only a class 2 card and just cracked the read/write speeds required by Win 7.
Best Buy had a sale a few weeks ago on all their San Disk cards so I picked up an Ultra class 6 8GB SDHC card. I can now for certain say that Readyboost has made a significant improvement in the responsiveness of the system. The machine has a Pentium Dual Core (cut down FSB and cache version of a Core 2 Duo) and 4GB of RAM. The HDD however is only a 5400rpm.
Monitoring the Readyboost cache access for a week showed that the system is regularly hitting the SD card for retrievals particularly when starting programs and performing other routine operations I use the system for. I honestly didn't expect much if any of an improvement as the conventional wisdom is that if you already have 4GB of RAM it Readyboost won't make any noticeable impact. I was, however, wrong in my assumptions and in believing the conventional wisdom regarding RAM capacity and Readyboost benefit.
For $15 I can't complain about the significant improvement in responsiveness and am now going to hold off on a new laptop for at least another 18 months or so. I've still got the Core 2 Duo desktop with 8GB RAM I built in 2008 that is overclocked to 3.1GHz for more strenuous use (video editing).
