We all know what a system resource hog Vista is. Adding more ram can do wonders to speed up Vista but if you are running Vista on your laptop you probably already have the maximum ram you can install. This tip will also work for your desktop if your maxed out on ram or just don’t want to open up the case.

This Tip is so simple I wish I had found it sooner.  All you need is a 4 or 8 Gig SDRam card (if you have an SDRam slot) or a flash drive. Follow the steps below.

1. Plug in the SDRam card or Flash drive into your laptop
2. Click START (Windows logo in bottom left of taskbar)
3. Click on COMPUTER
4. Right click on your SDRam or Flash Drive
5. Select PROPERTIES
6. Along the top of the properties windows CLICK on READYBOOST
7. Click on radio button to select USE THIS DEVICE
8. Move slider to allocate the maximum space
9. Click APPLY then OK

You should now have another 4 to 8 gigs ram and notice a difference in speed and wont slow to a crawl when you have multiple windows open.

Until next time..

I have been playing around with different operating systems on my PC at home. My primary install is Windows XP and have installed a couple different distro’s of Linux as a dual boot and while I liked what I saw my son was less than impressed when he found out he couldn’t run his favorite games, until I showed him the dual boot.

About a week ago I decided to take the leap of faith and install Windows 7 RC 1 in a dual boot. I was surprised, everything went very smooth and I think the install was even faster than installing XP. So far I like it, especially the full preview window of currently running apps in the status bar. Mouse over the icon for app in the status bar and see a real preview of the window that is open.

I have windows Vista (slow) on my notebook and I decided to load Win 7 on my laptop as well and see what the performance difference was. Windows 7 runs circles around Vista. Much faster and alot less annoying security alerts.

Windows 7 doesn’t come loaded with its own email application so you will have to either download windows live mail or another windows mail app of your choice. But that is the only drawback I have seen so far and many will see that as a plus, not having all the windows live apps preloaded.

Here are a couple of links with more info on windows 7 from CNet along with a download link or you can download from microsoft.com but have heard of people having trouble with incomplete downloads, mine kept timing out pausing and restarting

Video Review of Win 7 from CNet

CNet stories on Windows 7

Download Windows 7 from CNets Download.com