Step 5: Hardware and Vista

Besides making the changes to your system that we’ve explained, there are some things you can buy that can make a big difference.

The first and most basic is more memory. In general, the more RAM your computer has, the faster Vista will perform.

Think of your hard drive as a pantry and your RAM as the dining room table. The bigger the table, the more food you can have out at once. You can have a giant pantry (hard drive), but if you have a tiny table (little RAM) you can’t cook big meals.

Adding memory, which is a lot less expensive than it used to be, is a simple way to improve performance if you have 1GB of RAM or less. (If you have more than 1GB of RAM, adding memory will help, but not as noticeably.) Adding or replacing RAM is relatively simple to do: You simply plug some chips into sockets on your computer’s motherboard.

The challenge, however, is getting the correct memory module for your PC. Just about every computer is different. Some are already equipped with plenty of memory, while others have very little. And there are a lot of different types of memory, so you need to be sure to get the exact right module for your system.



If you don’t want to go through the trouble of finding and installing more memory, you can take advantage of a Vista feature called ReadyBoost. If you have a high-speed USB flash drive, Vista can use it the way it uses internal memory. It’s not as fast, but on low-memory machines it can make a lot of difference.

Here’s what you need:

A USB flash drive with at least the same amount of memory as the RAM on your computer. So if you have 512MB of RAM, you want at least a 512MB flash drive, preferably even larger.

The memory card must be high-speed. The ones you can buy in your local big-box store probably won’t cut it. Look for devices from major brands such as Lexar or SanDisk that are designed for ReadyBoost.

A 2GB SanDisk Cruzer Micro, which the company says meets ReadyBoost’s requirements, costs only about S$50, so we’re not talking about a major investment.

When you plug the flash drive into your computer, Vista will ask what you want to do with it. Choose "Speed up my system" and follow the instructions.



Note that ReadyBoost makes very little difference on machines with a lot of memory, but it’s a great way to speed up a lower-end system.

Another hardware investment you might want to make is a more powerful video card. Today, video cards are computers in their own right, and Vista takes advantage of them by letting them handle the display so your computer itself has more power available for running your software.

A graphics card with at least 256MB of RAM based on technology from either ATI or Nvidia can make a big difference, especially if you’re into video games or photo or video editing. You can spend S$500 or more for a top-of-the-line card, but a midrange model such as the ATI Radeon X1950 Pro or one using Nvidia ’s GeForce 7600 chip set (both about S$300) can make a tremendous difference.

Finally, if you have either a laptop or an uninterruptible power supply for your desktop, Vista offers a way to speed up your hard drive. (The downside is, if there’s a sudden power outage you can lose data, which is why you need a laptop or a battery backup.)

From your Control Panel, double-click Device Manager.

Click the plus sign next to "Disk drives".

Look for your hard drive on the list. It should be obvious--it won’t be a USB device, for example.

Double-click it.

Click the Policies tab.

Check "Enable write caching on the disk" (if it isn’t already checked) and "Enable advanced performance".

Click "OK" and close Device Manager.

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