I was doing a little reading about Microsoft Vista mainly looking for any new technology and concepts included in the OS. One thing that caught my eye is a thing called "SuperFetch".

Superfetch is an advanced memory caching feature that includes 2 capabilities: ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive. It speeds up your computer by keeping track of the programs you use most and pre-loading them into memory when that memory is not being used for something else.

ReadyBoost - This allows you to speed up your computer by using flash memory as additional RAM. You can simply plug in a USB thumb drive and tell Vista how much of the thumb drive you want to use. Since flash memory is faster than a hard drive it speeds up your computer.

ReadyDrive - Later this year we will start seeing a new type of hard drive hitting the market called a "Hybrid Drive". It's simply a traditional hard drive that also includes some non-volitile flash memory (NAND). The flash memory will work like the ReadyBoost described above but can also contain the files to boot your system and run programs. The result will be MUCH FASTER boot times. This is an especially big deal for laptops because it will increase battery life and improve reliability. If there's enough flash then the hard drive won't even have to spool up. Also. if the laptop is accidently dropped, the risk of loss of data is significantly reduced if the hard drive is not spinning and the heads are parked.

CPU's have increased in speed exponentially over the past 20 years but hard drives have not seen anywhere close to the same improvements. Advances in the area of non-volitile memory are about to change all of that. Sandisk already has a 100% solid state drive called the Sandisk SSD UATA. It has no moving parts and is very fast. A Toshiba laptop was fitted with one of these and could boot Windows XP in 12 seconds.

Additional info and links:

Vista Performance Features

Hybrid Storage Alliance

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