LAS VEGAS (January 9, 2006) – Today Corsair®, a worldwide leader in high performance computer products, announced immediate availability of its TurboFlash Family of ReadyBoost™ capable USB drives. Microsoft®’s new ReadyBoost technology allows the use of a removable flash memory device to improve Windows Vista system performance by acting as cache memory. Corsair’s TurboFlash takes full advantage of Microsoft’s new ReadyBoost flash technology concept to help improve system performance for Windows Vista™ - the next generation of Windows client operating system. Although adding system memory (RAM) is often the best way to improve your PC's performance, Corsair’s TurboFlash can boost system performance by retaining data the system can quickly store and retrieve to maximize PC responsiveness. Data stored on a flash memory device can be accessed much more quickly than data kept on the hard disk. Corsair’s TurboFlash also provides reliable encrypted protection of the data stored on it to prevent inappropriate access. TurboFlash is validated by Microsoft to be fully Windows ReadyBoost compliant and is compatible on all versions of Windows Vista. “Corsair’s TurboFlash can provide a great performance boost to Windows Vista systems,” said Richard Hashim, Director of Product Marketing at Corsair. “Users can experience noticeable improvements in PC responsiveness and performance especially when using our TurboFlash product with PCs containing 512MB of main memory.” Backed with Corsair’s 10-year warranty and on-demand customer support, the new TurboFlash products are currently available through Corsair’s authorized distributors, resellers, retailers and e-tailers worldwide. The introduction MSRP of the 512MB and 1GB TurboFlash are $16.99 USD and $24.99 USD, respectively. Soon to be available from Corsair are Windows Vista upgrades kits which include two modules of Corsair Value Select Memory and a TurboFlash drive. These kits will be made available in Q1’07. Corsair Part Number / Density: CMFUSBTV2.0-512 / 512MB CMFUSBTV2.0-1GB / 1GB For more information on TurboFlash as well as information on where to purchase it, please visit www.corsair.com. High resolution images of the product are available for download at http://www.corsair.com/corsair/media.html. About Corsair Corsair, a member of JEDEC, has been a leader in the design and manufacture of high speed modules since 1994. Corsair has earned the reputation as being the first to market with leading-edge products supporting new computing platforms and technologies. Corsair supplies memory for applications ranging from mission-critical servers to ultra-high performance gaming systems. The performance and reliability of Corsair memory products makes them ideal for memory intensive computing. Corsair also manufactures high performance cooling solutions and power supplies for the enthusiast marketplace. More information on Corsair is available at www.corsair.com.
I saw these on some site with pre-order Vista, but surely USB 2.0 pen-drives (and at that lowish price) are too slow for cache-like purposes? Can't find anything on read/write speeds...
http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx That explained quite a lot to me. I can imagine it would be useful for people running less than 512MB of memory, seems like a reasonable idea.
Flash is very low access time compared to HD, but anything over tiny files and the distance runner overtakes the sprinter AFAICS. But hey, 1Gb of Flash is dirt cheap compared to another 512k of DRAM. And rather than the constant noise of HD thrashing, they have the silence of Flash memory thrashing...though "all pages on the device are backed by a page on disk." so maybe not. The speeds Matt Ayers quotes are the minimum for a ReadyBoost™-suitable pen-drive, rather than the Corsair spec, so most any decent-brand USB2 ones should be OK.
