Readyboost explained once and for all from the Readyboost "owner"

Since there has been so much confusion about Readyboost, its features, capabilities, here is an article and a Q&A session from the person at Microsoft who is responsible for the Readyboost function. I find it to explain more or less everything about the subject

Enjoy:

http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx

 

Thanks. Great stuff.

 

Basically, it's pointless if you have enough RAM, and it's not fast enough to really provide you with any benefits for gaming, so it's basically only for people who are trying to save money on their computer by not buying enough RAM, or people who have massive memory requirements, which really should be solved by... buying more RAM. And Microsoft using a sane caching algorithm rather than pushing all file caching to disk via the pagefile. Which makes file caching basically pointless.

He also lies:

My mp3 player shows itself as a disk volume, I don't even know if it has some stupid "plays for sure" interface, and either way it's not necessary. I just copy files over, and the player plays them. If this is how good Microsoft engineers are, I'm glad I use their products as little as possible.

 

A question...

Have you actually tried running Readyboost from your MP3 player? If not, then how do you know that his information isn't accurate?

I'm guessing that you haven't. After all, who needs real information to attack Microsoft with when you can simply pull a bunch of garbage out of your hat?

 

No, I haven't tried running it. But he says that an mp3 player must present itself as a disk volume to be used, which mine does, so that invalidates his point, and basically shows he's completely uninformed about how many mp3 players work. SOME of them use the Plays For Sure interface, but not all of them do, and he's basing his statement on the fact that apparently every mp3 player uses Plays For Sure (and therefore can't be used as disk volume simultaneously). I was refuting that. If you can't see that, you're a fanboy.

 

Perhaps but a majority of people have iPods and that's what I believe he is talking about, and so what if he is ill-informed that many 1-2 gig mp3 players are disk volumes...

And ignorance =/= lying

 

You're making excuses. iPod's don't use "Plays For Sure". They don't play Windows Media files. And either way, iPods DO show up as disk volumes, they just don't have fast enough access speeds (especially the disk-based ones) to meet their performance requirements for ReadyBoost.

Basically, he's got showing he has virtually no experience with anything outside of Microsoft hardware and software, which makes anything he does say of dubious validity. If he is in fact that ignorant, that speaks volumes about Microsoft's culture. If all you ever had experience with for cars was a Ford Pinto, you'd think it was great too because it's better than walking. But that doesn't make it good.

 

Can't agree enough about the talking heads at Microsoft. I think this guy was okay, I mean he has to be careful to state what works with readyboost. If he's wrong then it can cause a lot of trouble, especially for the hardware companies he wrongly names.

Now if he says it doesn't work and you discover it does then give yourself a pat on the back, but he keeps his job either way by playing it safe.

 

Uh, why should a Microsoft employee who is talking about a Vista feature know anything about MP3 players? He's giving information about a service that is primarily meant to be used with flash drives, not MP3 players. Also note that the article is from mid 2006..

 

Ughh. Makes me wish they took this much effort to remove all the bloatware out of VISTA.

 

iPods do work with readyboost. Atleast the 1GB Shuffles and above. Tons of other MP3 players work just fine too.

 

Come on guys, no need to get all upset with eachother. I think the article answers a lot of the questions that people often ask. That was the only point of posting it.

If you can use your MP3 player, good for you. No need to start attacking or questioning the "owner" from Microsoft because he might not have taken everything into account when doing the Q&A session. Please stop bringing your grudge towards Microsoft to this thread. This thread is about being informative.

 

Jabba, thank you so much for this very helpful ariticle!

 

That may be true, but both are equally bad.