Readyboost won't help you with the significant disk I/O that can occur with (a) indexing and (b) AV scanning and (c) Outlook PST files. Once the drive is spinning, I doubt there is much additional power draw - I suspect that there isn't that much drag. The main power draw in laptops these days (as I understand it) are screens and GPUs.
Maybe I'm more of a power user, but I can physically see the difference in running VMs off a 5400 RPM drive vs. A 7200 RPM drive (identically configured Dell Latitude D830s with a couple of VMs on the modular bay drive). The 5400 RPM drives are slower to start the VMs, and when running through a set of test cases take longer to complete (you can see this just by watching the two machines side by side). Cheers Ken From: Carl Houseman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, 13 May 2008 10:24 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Why XP is doomed My rule(s) of thumb for minimum RAM to get the job done: Light/casual user: XP 512MB Vista 1GB Average user: XP 1GB Vista 2GB Power user: XP 2GB Vista 3+ GB Myself, 90% of the time I'm only an average user. Vista @ 2GB is just fine. And I don't notice much drag for 5400 rpm drives in the laptop either. That can happen when half of the 2GB RAM is given to cache. I suspect I could reduce disk dependency further with a ReadyBoost drive, much lower power than the watts needed for 7200 vs. 5400. Carl From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, May 12, 2008 4:00 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Why XP is doomed Really ... I have a Pentium D, 3GHz, 2M RAM. You think if I bumped the RAM to 4G that Vista would be OK with it? I mostly use this PC for photoediting (Photoshop CS3), and video editing (which in my case is converting PAL to NTSC, or making a DVD out of AVI files, using Nero 7). Feel free to reply offlist .... ~ Upgrade to Next Generation Antispam/Antivirus with Ninja! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbelt-software.com/SunbeltMessagingNinja.cfm> ~
