Laptops All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies- P48: Okay, I’ll admit it: I’ve got a strange biography. I’ve been a writer all my life. My first semi-pro job was sports editor of my high school newspaper. (Go Commodores!) After college I was a political reporter for daily newspapers in Ohio and New York (I covered four national nominating conventions and two Presidential campaigns) and a correspondent for The Associated Press. And then, in 1983, I gave in to my inner geek and became the first Executive Editor of PC Magazine, back in the days when most people asked, “What is a PC?”. | 444 Using ReadyBoost Finally you ve got to have the right type of flash memory key to enable ReadyBoost. When you plug an external memory block into a laptop running Windows Vista the operating system runs a quick performance test if the memory is too slow a message informs you that it can only be used for data storage and not as an extension of system memory. See Figure 1-7. It s likely that ReadyBoost won t accept older flash memory keys you already own. When you go shopping look for devices labeled as Vista Ready or ReadyBoost Ready. Figure 1-7 My new laptop and my new flash memory key work well together but the operating system determined that the memory was not fast enough to be used with ReadyBoost technology. Using ReadyBoost Vista notices anytime you plug a flash memory key into a laptop and the operating system asks if you want to speed up your system using the memory or use the memory as a place to hold files. If you choose to speed up the system with ReadyBoost the system displays a Properties screen for the memory and a new tab that supports ReadyBoost. Here you can adjust the amount of space you want to allow the system to use for cache you can devote all the memory to that purpose or divide the memory between cache and file storage. The minimum amount of flash memory for ReadyBoost purposes is 256MB and any amount beyond that offers improvements in performance. The maximum is 4GB. Using ReadyBoost 445 When this new technology was introduced Microsoft recommended that the way to get the best ReadyBoost performance was to match the capacity of the flash memory device to the amount of installed system memory. Thus if you have 2GB of RAM in the machine you would get the best performance by installing 2GB of ReadyBoost-compatible flash memory. This may change with future updates and Service Packs for Windows Vista keep posted on changes by visiting the Microsoft web site and searching for ReadyBoost. To be recognized as a ReadyBoost device the flash memory
