A Quiet Day

Saturday has been a quiet day, I needed to do some personal housekeeping and buy a replacement USB drive for Vista Speed boost, and have a couple of Power points I need to prepare for next weeks classes on perspective. So decided not to take any long trips today and just relax a little.
Managed to get a Speed boost "ready" USB from Panamericana as Microsoft Vista is almost UNUSABLE without one. Granted my laptop only has 512mb of memory and for Vista this is totally unsuitable even though its sold that way!! Compaq you should be ashamed. I will need to look into the option of replacing or upgrading the RAM memory as a minimum of 2GB is really required to make a laptop run Vista smoothly looking at the Windows Experience Index shows a rating of 2.0 and this is down to memory alone, other areas are 4.0 and above. Although the USB helps speed things up it doesn't change the onboard configuration so it is still seen as a bottle neck BUT and this is the key fact without the USB VISTA is totally pointless, with it ..It is just usable and no more.
I still feel that on return to UK I will revert to a copy of XP and transfer this Vista Ultimate to my Desktop which has over 2gig of memory available.
So for anyone out there buying a laptop with VISTA on it.. If your laptop doesn't have 2gb of onboard RAM make sure you buy a 2GB USB drive or you will end up frustrated and annoyed.. BUT !!! MAKE SURE IT IS ONE OF THE USB DRIVES VISTA CAN USE - It isn't well highlighted, but NOT every USB can be used only certain makes or models designed for the task - I now have 3 USB drives and only 1 of them is able to use the Speed boost (Microsoft call it Readyboost!!) option. So if buying one look for one advertising it is able to be used for it. Memorex works though they are expensive BUT Imation NANO equally as expensive don't work. Be wary buy carefully.

Now sadly its back to work as England seem to be getting a small beating by the South Africans at Rugby I'd like to say the commentary was in English or even Spanish but unfortunately its in French. Oh well least they aren't getting beaten 36-0 this time.