Encrypt The Planet

VISTA READY BOOST: Did you know?  

All versions of VISTA allow you to use a USB thumb drive to suppliment your internal RAM. The great new feature is called "Ready Boost", plug in the USB thumb (flash) drive and you have that much more RAM. The only catch is the USB thumb drive must be equal to or greater than your internal RAM. Be advised, 32bit VISTA will only utilize 4 gigabytes of RAM so you are limited to the accumulated internal and USB Ready Boost RAM of 4 gigabytes. 64bit VISTA however is a different breed. If you have a dual core or multicore processor, it is optimal you use Vista 64bit OS. Vista 64bit is backwards compatible with all 32bit windows software. See the chart below for Vista 64bit RAM size compatibility:

Windows Vista Edition 64-bit memory support

Overall the Xporter XT, is one of the fastest performers on the market right now not just in ReadyBoost tests, but also for general storage use. The below test was made on a VISTA 32bit operating system.

4GB Xporter XT USB FLASH DRIVE  FORMATTED TO NTFS USED IN THE TEST

ALREADY HAVE VISTA AND A FLASH DRIVE?

From the Factory your flash drive is usually formated as FAT32. FAT is a good name for this format because it's slow and eats a lot of bus time. NTFS is the way to go! It requires a little more Flash memory for this format (35 Meg on a 4 Gig flash as opposed to 4K for FAT32, but it's well worth it. Format your Flash Drive on a Vista machine to NTFS. Your drive will now be quicker than ever for both XP and Vista. and it's now fast enough to use it as "Speed Boost" on Vista.

CAN XP USE THE READYBOOST TECHNOLOGY? TRY EBOOSTR:

This TechTip assumes that you have a PC that was made within the last three to five years. Most desktop and laptop computers of that vintage use DDR memory. DDR stands for Double Data Rate. DDR memory offers twice the data transfer rate of the previous generation of memory.

Of course, all DDR memory isn't created equal. There's DDR, DDR-2, and DDR-3 memory. DDR is the oldest of the group. So old, in computer terms anyway, that it is being phased out. DDR-2 is about twice as fast as conventional DDR memory. DDR-3 is, again, about twice as fast as DDR-2. However, to achieve the higher speed for the RAM, the latency of the memory suffered. Latency is the amount of time, in CPU cycles, that your computer takes to get to data that's in memory.  At lower CPU speeds, DDR-3 is somewhat slower than DDR-2. At higher speeds, though, DDR-3 is noticeably faster.

Another difference between the different types of DDR memory is the number of pins each has. Pins are what connect the memory to the motherboard in memory slots. DDR memory has 184 pins, while DDR-2 and DDR-3 memory have 240 pins. While the pins in DDR-2 and DDR-3 memory are the same size, they are incompatible.

When you're looking at DDR memory, you'll read information like DDR-266 PC-2100. All that refers to is the amount and rate of data that the RAM can transfer. So, in DDR-266, the 266 refers to the theoretical number of data transfers per second -- in this case, 266 million. PC-2100 refers to the type of memory module. The 2100 also refers to the peak rate of data transfer that the memory supports -- in this case, 2,100 megabits per second. The higher the number, the higher the number of data transfers per second, and the greater the peak transfer rate.

Like a computer's CPU, memory also has a clock speed. The clock speed of the memory is measured in megahertz (MHz) and is the actual speed at which data is transferred to and from memory. The clock speed of RAM is usually half the number of data transfers per second that the memory module is capable of. So, with DDR-333 memory, the clock speed is 166 MHz. So, why is the number double with DDR RAM? Because data is transferred to memory twice.

This may seem like superfluous information, but it will come in handy when you go to upgrade your RAM.

Choosing RAM
The first steps that you should take when choosing RAM are to find out:
How much memory your computer has
The maximum amount of memory that it supports
What type of memory your computer uses
How much memory you're packing
To find out how much memory your computer packs, right click on the My Computer icon on your desktop and then click Properties to open the System Properties dialog box. The amount of memory in you computer is listed in the bottom right corner of the dialog box.

The maximum amount your PC can handle
Unfortunately, this doesn't tell you how many sticks of memory your computer contains. You can only be sure of this in a couple of ways. If, for example, your computer has 512 MB of RAM, then it most likely has one stick of memory installed. Any higher amount and you need to open the computer's case and take a look. If you have 1 GB of memory and there are two sticks of memory installed, then each will weigh in at 512 MB.

Mixing and matching RAM
There was a time when you had to have the same memory in your PC -- you couldn't, say, match an 8 MB module with a 4 MB one. It wouldn't take; instead of 12 MB your computer would only recognize the 8 MB module. Thankfully, those days are over. You can now mix and match. For example, two of my laptops pack a 1 GB stick of RAM and a 512 MB stick of RAM.

A problem may arise, though, if you try to mix and match different speeds of RAM. The different RAM just might not be compatible. On the other hand, some memory is backwards compatible. Remember my ThinkPad? According to the Lenovo Web site, it supports PC-2100 memory. When I went to upgrade it, I couldn't find the right memory. Actually, my business partner snapped up the last 1 GB stick of PC-2100 RAM for his ThinkPad before I could get my hands on it. At another store, though, a technician told me that I could use PC-2700 memory with my existing PC-2100 memory. It just wouldn't work at the higher data transfer rate. In the year or so since the upgrade, I've had not trouble with the memory.

That said, you can't mix DDR memory with DDR-2 or DDR-3. Even if your motherboard supports two types of memory, you can generally only use one type or the other.