I tried ReadyBoost when it debuted in Vista and I was not impressed. I ran it on my Dell XPS420 (Q6600, 4Gb, DDR2)with Vista home premium. for at least two weeks. I also tried it on Visat x64 on a Dell Studio XPS 435MT(i7 920, 6Gb DDR3) I used a 4Gb in both cases, in fact I used the same PNY Attache 4Gb USB stick. Then Windows 7 came out and microsoft claimed it had had made changes to ReadyBoost.
On the face of it there does appear to be changes. In Vista you could use a flash memory device up to 4Gb, and you could only have one ReadyBoost device. In Windows 7 you can use up to 8Gb and more than one flash memory device. The real difference is how the ReadyBoost has changed between Vista and Windows 7.
So I first tried the ReadyBoost on a new machine I bought for my wife. It is a Hewlett Packard Touchsmart (300-1003)(AMD 235e, 4Gb DDR3) which came with Windows 7 Home Premium. I did not notice any immediate difference after configuring the USB flash drive. So I was kind of disappointed but I left it running on the computer. A couple of days later my wife stated that the computer was firing up faster and running smoother switching programs. I gave it a try and it indeed was faster, though the reality is it was only slightly faster. Startup was 28 seconds faster and switching programs appeared to be faster but I had not tested program switching. I did not expect to great of change as this computer had a decent memory size and speed.
The next victim was a E-Machines netbook an EM250-1162 that I had bought at Wal-Mart. It came with 1Gb of DDR2. Instaed of a USB stick(my wife won't give the USB stick back) I chose to use a SD (Secure Digital) card. It is an ADATA SDHC 8Gb class 6. This machine definitely was borderline with the factory memory configuration. The EM250 comes with a built in multi card slot. I did try some USB sticks in this netbook (by the way I am typing this article on the EM250) I tested the different USB sticks and SD cards with HD Tune. Some of then USB sticks were slightly faster than the cards untiul I tested the ADATA. it was near all of the USB sticks except the PNY Attache that the wife won't give back. The real decision to use the ADATA came from convenience. The SD card stays in the netbook without protruding from it. I noticed an immediate difference in startup. it fired up twice as fast as it had. progr4am to program was also slightly faster. I had ordered a 2Gb memory upgrade for this netbook. so when it came in I removed the SD card and installed the memory. With double the memory it fired up much quicker than it had stock, though there waqs still alot of Hard Hisk activity. I added the SD card back in. The netbook fired up faster than the memory alone, but it did not make as much difference in startup as it had with only 1Gb.
Overall I think Windows 7 ReadyBoost is superior to the Vista version. If you have a system with 4Gb or less you may see a difference. If you have 2Gb or less you probably will see a difference. I would not waste my time configuring more than one ReadyBoost drive on any computer. Is it better to use a 4Gb or a 8Gb flash drive? Well I say the decision is up to you and will probably be made by cost.
I did try a 4Gb SD card and did not see any real difference in performance, it was slighly slower but it was also a class 4 card so that could have been the difference. As a footnote, when I need to get onto the internet quick I use the EM250 netbook as it is up and running in less than a minute.
