Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Commercial
Readyboost technology for Windows XP
by Ian Dumych Feb 3rd 2008 at 12:00PM
Since the release of Windows Vista, scores of consumers have downgraded to Windows XP, due to performance issues, instability, and the confusion that Vista's new dialogs and interface cause.Despite all this, there are some new features that are worthwhile in Vista, such as Readyboost. Windows Readyboost helps make the operating system and applications start faster by using flash memory for cache.
Now, Vista refugees on Windows XP can enjoy this same functionality, thanks to Eboostr. With this third party application, one can set up caches on up to four devices, and it's compatible with all Readyboost compliant devices!
A free trial can be downloaded that works for four hours after each boot, or you can get the full version for just $29.
I don't know if this is a labor of love or merely the brainchild of four very gifted games designers, but Level Up is a really weird mash-up of gaming elements that you have probably never seen in a Flash game before.
Let's start with the premise itself: Groundhog Day meets Memento. The game experience revolves around 'days': you explore the world and the clock slowly ticks towards the evening. You bounce around picking up gems and talking to the denizens of 'Level Upland'. Eventually you feel tired and head back to ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ethan said 10:34AM on 2-03-2008
This is an awesome app, it cut nearly 40 seconds off of my login time, and many of my applications launched much faster, and that was only when I used one 1GB flash drive, and eBoostr supports up to 4! Well worth the money if you want more speed.
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Agashka said 12:42PM on 2-03-2008
Hmm, wouldn't it be better to use ram instead of flash to do this?
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brian said 12:50PM on 2-03-2008
Sure would.
emmzee said 1:45PM on 2-03-2008
'course, for some (ex. laptop users) just adding more RAM isn't always an option.
kojo87 said 2:35PM on 2-03-2008
thats what i was thinking. $30 you can get 1GB of DDR2 667 laptop RAM.
and unless your laptop is 10 years old, upgrading your RAM is not that hard emmzee
Peter said 3:38PM on 2-03-2008
Adding RAM would be better, but on all 32-bit platforms, going beyond 4 Gigs (and in all practicality beyond 3) won't give you any benefit.
orangeguru said 1:43PM on 2-03-2008
I have a Notebook with 1,5 GByte of RAM and a 7200 RPM HD. I can see some speed improvements - I am sure it offers more boost on older or machines with slow HDs and little RAM. But I would recommend upgrading your drive or your RAM before using an USB stick and this software.
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Agashka said 1:48PM on 2-03-2008
hmm yes, but ive hitted Windows XP's limit, by adding 4GB, and i dont really use it all, id like to sacrafice 1GB for the cache, that would leave me with 2.5gb ram.
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Dave Rock said 4:08PM on 2-03-2008
ram is much faster than flash mem, yes ok on older machines maybe an OK idear
but i cant see any point in this any other time, some machines can take 8gigs of ram do we need more now?, if u think you do need more ram then you've got to many tabs open on firefox and playing halo 3 talking to your grandma on the webcam while trying to fix her computer with remote assistance, oh and that train surfing vid on youtube ;O)
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orangeguru said 7:13PM on 2-03-2008
You obviously never worked in graphic design: having Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign open at the same time - you never can have enough RAM.
ViviD said 10:45PM on 2-03-2008
People that comment here have misunderstood principle, by witch ReadyBoost/eBoostr works.
ReadyBoost/eBoostr is not an extension of Your RAM, it's more like helper for Windows page file. Some bits of page file are saved on flash memory, and because flash memories have better seek times, you have performance boost(information is saved and windows can use it after restart @ startup, but this is not the case with RAM, because on every restart information in ram disappears). Windows is designed to use a page file, even if you have plenty of free RAM(for instance Photoshop needs page file) so gigantic ram can do more harm than good.
Sorry for my weird English...
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mxxcon said 3:44AM on 2-04-2008
PLEASE BE VERY CAREFUL WITH THIS SOFTWARE.
it's installing its own system driver and it intercept system's read/write requests to handle caching.
however this software is brand new and ANY BUGS IN IT WILL BE CRITICAL and potentially system-fatal!
i wouldn't dare to use, or even to test it, on a 'everyday use' system.
on my secondary testbed it crashed after ~30min of work. it crashed so strange that i never experienced this before. in windows explorer and cmd.exe some files were missing, i couldn't execute or quit any application, i couldn't shutdown my system, some letters in fonts were missing..eventually it bluescreened and instantly coldbooted at which point it bluescreened whenever i was booting up windows.
only by booting into safe-mode and uninstalling this software was i able to get my system back to normal.
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Bob G said 6:54AM on 2-04-2008
Wouldn't it be much easier for the motherboard manufacturers install an programable eprom flash memory chip on the motherboard for this purpose? A flash card is the same thing, an eprom. In my old HP palmtops the flash memory cards could be used as additional RAM and eprom for an OS. This, however, is a problem with the Windows OS that doesn't recognize a flash card or chip as useable RAM. But an eprom chip on the motherboard could be used as booster or programmable type BIOS for many programs. An eprom retains all the information and is not erased on shutdown. A BIOS starts a motherboard and hardware on it and an eprom could be used to accelerate an OS and contain all the booting infromation for an OS. I have wondered about this for many years now and still don't understand why it hasn't been done yet. Eproms are widely used in the automobile computers so why not in a home PC? Maybe I should patent this idea, you heard it here first.
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James said 11:04AM on 2-04-2008
Um, bob? Have you priced EEPROMs lately? [aside: I doubt you meant EPROM, since I'm pretty sure that refers exclusively to the "write once, erase with UV light, write again" variety] What I assume you're referring to is going to be several orders of magnitude more expensive for a given quantity of memory. Let's put it this way: if you're going to do your idea, you basically have *some kind* of read-write solid state memory hooked to the motherboard through *some kind* of bus. Readyboost is just an implementation of that idea, where the memory is "flash" and the bus is "USB".
Anyway, my only question is this: does Readyboost performance suffer greatly if there's a hub between the flash drive and the host? I've got 4 onboard USB ports, but they're full as of now. I'd like to try this out and see how big a difference it makes, and if I do it I want to test it in the optimal configuration. I could rearrange, if need be.
dihan said 6:49AM on 3-26-2008
No need to buy the full version.I will give you full version
in $2.For more information email me at dihan_1219@yahoo.com
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