What's Required To Make ReadyBoost/Drive Work In XP?

[CaptRobertApril]

After careful consideration, I've determined that for my particular uses at this time (before I finally shell out for my 2xClovertown), the only real advantage Vista would be giving me is the Readystuff. Does anyone know how difficult that would be to implement in XP? Would it be a major OS rewrite or is some 15 year old kid gonna put it up tomorrow on shareware.com?

 

[SuperFly03]

Honestly I am not an expert on this crap, but I suspect it would be a pretty big rewrite.

ReadyBoost uses a connected device to store files, like a page file, and it works dynamically and is supposed to really work and improve system performance. Also, if M$ could have sold it as a performance booster, or added it to a service pack to improve XP performance, I bet they would have. It isn't like M$ is losing alot of people to other OS'es but it probably would make a few fence riders tip toe into M$'s camp.

Of course, if I understood ReadyBoost completely or OS'es completely I could be of more help, but I work with what I have.

Side note: WTH are the requirements for ReadyBoosy. I have tested my OCZ Rally USB drive, no go, iPod no go (wasn't expecting it to work lol). Oh well, who knows...... well hopefully someone does.

 

[CaptRobertApril]

Honestly I am not an expert on this crap, but I suspect it would be a pretty big rewrite.

ReadyBoost uses a connected device to store files, like a page file, and it works dynamically and is supposed to really work and improve system performance. Also, if M$ could have sold it as a performance booster, or added it to a service pack to improve XP performance, I bet they would have. It isn't like M$ is losing alot of people to other OS'es but it probably would make a few fence riders tip toe into M$'s camp.

Of course, if I understood ReadyBoost completely or OS'es completely I could be of more help, but I work with what I have.

Side note: WTH are the requirements for ReadyBoosy. I have tested my OCZ Rally USB drive, no go, iPod no go (wasn't expecting it to work lol). Oh well, who knows...... well hopefully someone does.

You got me. I figured that it should work with any connectable flash-type device, but I've never beta'd Vista so can't help there. I still have endless faith in the 15 year old programmers of this world and I'll still bet a plugged nickel that some shareware proggy that does the same thing is gonna pop up sooner or later!

 

[1Tanker]

Also, if M$ could have sold it as a performance booster, or added it to a service pack to improve XP performance, I bet they would have. It isn't like M$ is losing alot of people to other OS'es but it probably would make a few fence riders tip toe into M$'s camp.

I think the opposite. MS doesn't want to make XP any more attractive, taking away reasons to upgrade to VISTA. Other than security updates, XP is a dead horse....as soon as they can make it so.

 

[CaptRobertApril]

Yeah, but some times dead horses refuse to die. I'm always surprised at how many people are still running Win 98SE on relatively recent hw with absolutely no problems whatsoever.

Win 3.11
Win 95
Win 98SE
Win XP SP2

Seem to be really stable OSs that just go on churning well past their sell-by date. (And things like Win ME die the miserable deaths they deserve). Vista was supposed to be rocksolid security and it's already been hacked. It was supposed to look better than Mac and all Aero does is run your GPU into the ground. I've never used Vista, but reading the reviews it seems that much of the user interface, especially for expert users, is a step backwards. As far as I'm concerned, if I can run XP SP2 maybe in 64bit so I can use up tons of RAM and in a configuration that would take advantage of all my eight cores (to be) as well as give me hybrid drive access, I would say that I need Vista like I need another STD (now that syphillis has so elegantly completed my set.)

 

[SuperFly03]

Vista was supposed to be rocksolid security and it's already been hacked. It was supposed to look better than Mac and all Aero does is run your GPU into the ground. I've never used Vista, but reading the reviews it seems that much of the user interface, especially for expert users, is a step backwards. As far as I'm concerned, if I can run XP SP2 maybe in 64bit so I can use up tons of RAM and in a configuration that would take advantage of all my eight cores (to be) as well as give me hybrid drive access, I would say that I need Vista like I need another STD (now that syphillis has so elegantly completed my set.)

What part of Vista was hacked? If it was product activation.... blame that on M$ because it is the same activation setup as XP. They originally had a much much stronger activation policy that was going to be hell to break, and even worse on end users, and because so many people complained M$ backed off and reverted to XP style activation. Since they reverted back to XP activation, hackers were very familiar with the way it works aiding in their effort to hack it.

As for Aero... I haven't had a single issue with it. It really doesn't look like it should take a "wonder card" to run. It seems to be pretty basic effects that an IGP could run. So while it is a definite change that the Windows GUI went from 2d to 3d rendering, can you really blame them? Discrete GPUs have so much extra power when sitting in the desktop as compared to yesteryears.

It will be interesting to see how Vista goes. I personally will get it, just because I need to know all the OSes (job related in a way), not to mention it has alot of potential.

 

[1Tanker]

Vista was supposed to be rocksolid security and it's already been hacked. It was supposed to look better than Mac and all Aero does is run your GPU into the ground. I've never used Vista, but reading the reviews it seems that much of the user interface, especially for expert users, is a step backwards. As far as I'm concerned, if I can run XP SP2 maybe in 64bit so I can use up tons of RAM and in a configuration that would take advantage of all my eight cores (to be) as well as give me hybrid drive access, I would say that I need Vista like I need another STD (now that syphillis has so elegantly completed my set.)

What part of Vista was hacked? If it was product activation.... blame that on M$ because it is the same activation setup as XP. They originally had a much much stronger activation policy that was going to be hell to break, and even worse on end users, and because so many people complained M$ backed off and reverted to XP style activation. Since they reverted back to XP activation, hackers were very familiar with the way it works aiding in their effort to hack it.

As for Aero... I haven't had a single issue with it. It really doesn't look like it should take a "wonder card" to run. It seems to be pretty basic effects that an IGP could run. So while it is a definite change that the Windows GUI went from 2d to 3d rendering, can you really blame them? Discrete GPUs have so much extra power when sitting in the desktop as compared to yesteryears.

It will be interesting to see how Vista goes. I personally will get it, just because I need to know all the OSes (job related in a way), not to mention it has alot of potential.It was activation, but only on 32-bit VISTA.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5470

 

[SuperFly03]

Ah good deal, thanks

 

[kamel5547]

I don't see how ReadyBoost would be any better than just sticking a fast hard drive (Raptor or SAS) into the PC. Its not like the read/write speeds on flash drives are very fast (they're downright slow IMO). I would expect that support for more drives will come but I'm not quite sure what the current requirements are (I never tried it while I was beta-ing).

This should answer your questions though:
http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx

As far as complexity of adding it to the OS it would be out of reach for anyone but MS. It would involve re-writing OS code and NOT just adding an application (although in theory I guess you could give individual applications the ability to be ReadyBoostish one by one by including additional code). Anyhow, IMO this is going to be a feature with very few users...

 

[SuperFly03]

I don't see how ReadyBoost would be any better than just sticking a fast hard drive (Raptor or SAS) into the PC. Its not like the read/write speeds on flash drives are very fast (they're downright slow IMO). I would expect that support for more drives will come but I'm not quite sure what the current requirements are (I never tried it while I was beta-ing).

This should answer your questions though:
http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx

As far as complexity of adding it to the OS it would be out of reach for anyone but MS. It would involve re-writing OS code and NOT just adding an application (although in theory I guess you could give individual applications the ability to be ReadyBoostish one by one by including additional code). Anyhow, IMO this is going to be a feature with very few users...

The point of ReadyBoost is to avoid opening the computer case. Companies are notoriously skimpy on RAM and alot of home users may not want to open their own computer case (obviously not a problem for people on this forum) so M$ gives a moderate alternative for those people. ReadyBoost is just plug and go. So if you notice your work PC is gimp, slap on a ReadyBoost capable device and give yourself a performance boost without opening the case, then take the drive with you at the end of the day. This way you don't alter you computer config, making management happy, and you get a faster PC, which makes you happy. Everybody wins (if it works as it has claimed).

Edit: Hmmm looking at the requirements, I guess the random performance of my OCZ Rally sucks 8O

PS thanks for the link.

 

[CaptRobertApril]

It will definitely be interesting to see if the performance advantages that are claimed in that article actually come true. I agree that it seems M$ has built the Ready stuff deep into the OS, but I'm wondering whether some basic code that already exists for the dime-a-dozen RAM-disk software/shareware could rather easily be cobbled together to write to Flash.