Sony TZ and Readyboost

Hello again everybody and this time I actually have something good - well, relatively good - to say about Readyboost.

You may remember my endless moans concerning my TZ MN21 with its single gigabyte of RAM memory whose suppliers, a firm called Comet, won't agree to said RAM being upgraded during the one-year warranty period.

Well, I now seem to have discovered a memory stick that does, actually, help in this situation! It is Sony's 8GB Microvault Midi (NB Midi, not Mini) currently on special offer for 30 GB pounds at Tesco, and I am interested to observe it has allocated just over 4 GB of storage space to Readyboost on what appears to be a permanent basis.

This Midi's activity light runs continuously and, in use, it really appears to speed up the TZ - the first of all the many devices I have tried which does.

Curiously enough even its own little sibling, the Microvault Midi 4GB, failed at this task so far as I was concerned but the 8GB version makes a really perceptible difference.

As other contributors to this forum have noted, the Windows Experience increment is not huge. My own overall score has gone up by just five per cent from 2.0 to 2.1 (this in the graphics department) but the really noticeable improvement seems to be in the TZ's response time and its tolerance of multiple windows being open simultaneously.

I would say now that this laptop's performance is about half as good as that of my Dell desktop, also with one gigabyte of RAM, running Windows XP - which, compared with the previous situation, is a tremendous boost.

At long last, cheers! Two cheers, at least...
Meg

 

That's useful to know, but I would first try putting a 2GB RAM module in the RAM slot. It works fine in my Sony G11, which also came as 1GB. Now it has 2.5GB but only uses 2GB because of the chipset limitation. The G series has very similar internal hardware.

John

 

Thank you John and as soon as Comet's warranty regulations permit me (please see interminable previous moans) I shall, indeed, do just that.
Meg

 

Has anybody tried this card yet for Readyboost?

Sandisk Extreme III Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo

Just came out in June, 30MB/s read and write speed. kicks butt. A 4GB care would seem to be perfect for a readyboost application... someone chime in.

 

No, not the Sandisk Extreme card but I did try Sandisk's ordinary Duo 4 GB card for Readyboost on my underpowered TZ and that, though having some effect, did not help as much as Sony's 8 GB Midi Microvault USB drive which is mentioned above.
What I find interesting is that the 8-gigabyte Sony Midi Microvault card seems to be seriously helpful in improving the TZ's pathetic response times while its 4-gigabyte version - identical presumably, apart from the memory capacity - is not.
We keep being told by the experts that there is no point at all in trying to dedicate more than 4 gigabytes of flash memory to Readyboost. My 8 GB Minivault dedicates only fractionally more than 4 GB, yet seems to work much better.
Am I imagining all this? Who's right???