ReadyBoost Will Improve System Performance

Yes and no. If you have a reasonably modern system, with even 1GB of RAM or more, you won’t see any performance increase from ReadyBoost, which lets you use removable flash memory to cache disk operations. In fact, with lots of RAM, we saw a slight dip in performance when using ReadyBoost. The picture is different if you’re pathetically RAM-poor: With just 512MB of RAM, app load times and general performance can be modestly improved with ReadyBoost... but why not spring for some real DIMMs instead of this half-baked setup? You shouldn’t be running Vista at all with so little RAM, nor should you be reading this magazine. 2GB of name-brand RAM will cost you less than 50 bucks; pricier than a 2GB thumb drive but oh so worth it.

If you really want to run ReadyBoost, the easiest way to turn it on is to insert your thumb drive and allow AutoPlay to run. Select “Speed up my system” from the menu. If you have AutoPlay disabled, right-click the thumb drive in the Computer view, select Properties, and choose the ReadyBoost tab. Dial ReadyBoost up to the maximum supported level of 4GB.