Cool Windows Vista Feature

I just read about a what I think to be very cool feature in the upcoming release of Vista. As I have about 4-5 GB of memory cards and USB flash drives that sit unused most of the time, I think this is really cool:

External memory devices Adding system memory (RAM) is often the best way to improve your PC's performance. More memory means more applications are ready to run without accessing the hard drive. However, upgrading memory is not always easy. You must learn what type of memory you need, purchase the memory, and open your computer to install the memory—which sometimes can invalidate your support agreement. Also, some machines have limited memory expansion capabilities, preventing you from adding RAM even if you are willing to do so.

Windows Vista introduces a new concept in adding memory to a system. USB flash drives can be used as External Memory Devices (EMDs) to extend system memory and improve performance without opening the box. Your computer is able to access memory from an EMD device much more quickly than it can access data on the hard drive, boosting system performance. When combined with SuperFetch technology, this can help drive impressive improvement in system responsiveness.

EMD technology is both reliable and secure. You can remove an EMD at any time without any loss of data or negative impact to the system; however, if you remove the EMD, your performance returns to the level you experienced without the device. Wear on the USB drive is not an issue when using it as an EMD. A unique algorithm optimizes wear patterns, so that a USB device can run as an EMD for many years, even when heavily used. Finally, data on the EMD is encrypted to help prevent inappropriate access to data when the device is removed.

So what are they saying I can use for more memory? Like a thumb drive? Ex. I stick a 1Gb memory stick into my computer and I could turn it into a memory module with this tech? I just want to make sure I understand.

Yes, exactly:



That means when Vista comes out, my computer is already set to have about 4-5GB of RAM. I went over and read the MS TechNet Beta newsgroups and performance is very good, especially using USB2.0 flash drives.

I saw a funny blurb about Vista a couple of weeks ago. One of the features is a one touch off button, no more need to "power down" via, start > turn off computer > turn off. I wonder why it took so long to come up with this one?

Pardon my ignorance, but USB (even USB 2.0) isn't nearly as fast as system, onboard RAM, is it?

Doesn't system RAM deal in the hundreds of megs a second transfer?

Definatly an interesting concept, I just wish Microsoft would think things through more before developing/announcing big O/S changes and features. I just want Windows to work properly out of the box, I don't care if it can clean my car windows and do my laundry, I just want to load it, boot it and work without getting the tylenol. This feature will work great, getting internet exploder to work properly will be a different challenge, at least I can use my EMDs!



A definate cool feature but if the EMD is another hard drive then performance is still the same, just easier than throwing in another hard drive. SuperFetch, finally, Microsoft agrees that their product is a dog.



I have the biggest problem with this statement from the article, removing a piece of temporary memory while the system is accessing it? Hmm, I would love to see the look on the poor college kids face when he unplugs the EMD while working on the big dissertation paper and it gets eaten because the transaction between the sytem bus and EMD failed as the document swirls in the drain of the abyss. Regardless of the memory technology being NV, it still requires power to perform the data erase/write, most of the portable Thumb Drive type technologies use power from the USB port to operate, power goes buh by, nothing gets written. These drives don't really have a buffer either as they rely on the USB Bus buffer to handle data transactions so no save there either. The encryption part is nice too but then again, it would be software encryption that would use system resources and system memory to perform the encrypt/decrypt both ways all the time, depending on the type of encryption, and base hardware, it could even cause a performance hit.

Well, you could from Windows 2000, perhaps even ME on up. As long as your system board could pass the control of the power button off to the O/S, you could configure it in the Power Settings Control Panel applet. There is an entry for what to do with power button press, the choices are usually Do Nothing, Hibernate (if your system supports it), Standby and Power Down, the power down feature would intercept the button press and interperet it as a shutdown command, Dell uses this a lot.

USB flash drives are slower than even normal IDE or SATA drives. We're talking megabytes-per-second transfer as opposed to GIGABYTES-per-second for actual RAM. Windows already puts virtual memory on your hard drive where it's accessed faster than current USB flash keys can handle.

The idea that sticking USB flash drives in your computer will improve the performance is wrong. Not even considering the fact that all flash devices have a limited write/rewrite cycle, and memory-style access patterns would kill them in no time. I am sure that you misunderstood what was being discussed.

You are correct, nothing beats the raw data speed of direct CPU to System RAM transfers. The speed can be even faster depending on the mainboard chipset, the CPU and the memory technology used.

Sounds more like a supplement than a replacement, but we'll see.

I love how my copy of XP has started locking up when I do Start->Turn off computer

Yay for ctrl+alt+del -> Shut down -> Turn off

Thank goodness for the 3 finger salute

I hate that kind of stuff about Windows, as bad as the weather here, changing every 5 minutes.