Readyboost vs. memory upgrade

[rfwebster]

I have a FE31-H notebook running vista Home premium and recently i was wondering about upgrading my memory. My notebook has a memorystick duo slot on the front, instead of actually upgrading my memory, is it possible to buy a memorystick duo stick and put it in the slot, and use windows readyboost.

What would you recomend, readyboost, or actual memory upgrade?

Thank you

[MattWilson]

Memory upgrade everytime.

The reason being that the card will be a lot slower and to be honest doesn't make much difference. ReadyBoost is really a bit of a con if you ask me.

You can find your memory upgrade here.

[kee-lo_]

I'm with Matt here, the speed of memory outsurpasses the speed of a memory stick, plus it's a lot more reliable.

Very cheap too now if you use crucial.com, and they're very supportive.

[fai_lok]

really? I was going to try using readyboosting when I got home.... what are the strengths and weaknesses of using it? Can it hurt? I got plenty of memory but doesn't it help start up? Since Flash memory works faster than HDD....

[Blencogo]

Quote from Matt Ayers, who is the Program Manager in the Microsoft Windows Client Performance group and basically owns the ReadyBoost feature.

"Overall the feature is designed to improve small random I/O for people who lack the expansion slots, money, and or technical expertise to add additional RAM. As y’all know, adding RAM is still the best way to relieve memory pressure."

So, if you have plenty of RAM you will probably not notice the difference because Vista will not be using a paging-file until you run out of memory. ReadyBoost is really a paging-file on flash memory and flash is particularly fast for small random I/O such as reading/writing to a paging-file. For large sequential I/O your hard disc at 80 MB/Sec is probably much faster than Flash which (depending on your media) is only about 12 MB/Sec for large sequential I/O.

So, to quote the Oracle, ReadyBoost is for those who cannot afford extra memory or who are running old machines with a low RAM capacity.

[kee-lo_]

It's really for technophobes who don't want to wate time waiting for someone to install the RAM or pay high prices for the installation.