I bought myself a 2GB SanDisk Cruzer Micro for RM62 from PIKOM PC Fair yesterday. The main purpose i bought this flash drive is to try out the ReadyBoost feature that come together with Windows Vista.

If you are not sure about this Vista’s feature, here are the explanation that you can find in Microsoft’s website:

Windows ReadyBoost introduces a new concept in add-on system memory. You can use nonvolatile flash memory devices, such as universal serial bus (USB) flash drives, to improve performance without having to add memory “under the hood.” The flash memory device serves as an additional memory cache—that is, memory that the computer can access much more quickly than it can access data on the hard disk drive.

Please note that not all flash memory devices (flash drives, SD memory cards) are able to use as ReadyBoost.
I’m unable to use my 2GB Apacer SD card (for my digital camera) for this purpose. The minimum requirements for ReadyBoost is 2.5MB/sec. The sales person told me that this SanDisk that i bought is 5MB/sec. The best practice is to confirm with the sales person that the flash drive is ReadyBoost ready before your purchase.

Once you plug in your USB drive into your computer, a screen will prompt for you to choose weather you want to open it with your explorer or use it as ReadyBoost. If you missed that screen, it will never been too late, you can still right click on your removable disk properties and open the “ReadyBoost” tab.

From here, you will able to choose weather you want to use this drive as ReadyBoost, and you can always set the space to reserve for system speed. And yes, your are done with your Vista’s ReadyBoost.

I really feel that the amount of time it took to load a program ready reduce significantly with ReadyBoost. It’s a cheaper yet affordable way to improve your Vista performance other then physical memory upgrade.

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I have been using Vista since end of May, with my current 1GB RAM running on AMD Turion 64×2 processor, I’m quite disappointed with the performance. I would suggest at least 2GB RAM in order to have a better experiences with Windows Vista.

Another affordable alternative to improve its performance is to use a flash drive to boost Vista performance with Microsoft’s ReadyBoost. I’m going to touch on this topic here as currently i does not have any ReadyBoost compatible flash drive. I’m going to tweak Vista the similar old way i did for my Windows XP.

1. Disable unnecessary program from start up

There are two ways to do this:
This can be done by typing “msconfig” in the run prompt or at command prompt. You will see a list of start up program that are currently running at the “Startup” tab. This is the easiest way to disable program from startup.

To disable an auto-start entry, simply uncheck its check box. You will need a reboot for this to take effect.

Another option is to use Autoruns from Sysinternal to disable unused or unnecessary program from “Startup”. I use this tools as it provides more information on what programs are configured to run during start up. Autoruns provides information like logon entries, Explorer add-ons, Internet Explorer add-ons and etc.

Same as “msconfig”, in order to disable an auto-start entry, simply uncheck its check box.

2. Disable services that are not required
Services run in the background will still runs and occupied system resources.

To do this, run “msconfig” again and in the “Services” tab, uncheck these services that are not reuiqred.

Services that i stopped:
Desktop Window Manager Session Manager – as i found that this services is utilising significant amount of RAM in the background.

Terminal Services – as far as i know this only applicable for Remote Desktop connectivity with I’m not going to use in my house.
Windows Error Reporting Service – I hate this as it always shown out to ask us to report to Microsoft when programs stop working properly.

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