Windows Vista and SuperFetch

I'm not entirely sure what the consumer benefits of Vista to somebody like me who only plays the odd game, browses the web, instant messages, watches DVD's and downloads music. Somebody might want to give me a rundown of what's so good about it. But in any case, I've decided to bet on the future, seeing as I have the funds, with the following laptop (and will be availing of the double memory offer):

http://laptopsdirect.ie/Toshiba_Satellite_Pro_A100_PSAACE-00W002EN/version-1.asp

I would like to know more about SuperFetch though. In theory, it sounds like the killer app that would totally justify my decision to go Vista. I hear it memorizes the programs you use regularly, and caches them to your hard drive so it always has the relevant information to hand, leading to vastly reduced loading times. Is this information correct?

 

It's not really an application in itself, just a feature.
To use it you need an external memory device (USB Stick, flash memory) and you plug it in the usb port of your pc. Windows will then configure that usb device and use it for superfetching. Note that if you have a 2GB usb stick and you give windows 2GB of it for superfetching, then you can't use the devide for anything else. It won't be full, but the space won't be available.

You also need a fast read/write device and it has to be consistent speed. Some device have a portion of them that is super fast, but the rest is slow. All of it has to be fast. Not lightning fast, but not 15$ cheap slow either.

Windows will put small files, less than 512kb I think, on that drive and use it kinda like a page file, but since it's faster to get the info from the usb drive than the hard drive, then it speeds things up very slightly.

I haven't seen many speed tests for this, but it looks promising.

MS also says that you should use the same amount of memory for this as the amount of ram you have. So if you have 1GB of ram, your usb stick should be at least 1GB: 2GB = 2GB usb stick etc....