Quesries for My Dell Mini 12- On Ready Booster and Shutdown Procedure...

**attyallanlatras** · June 12th, 2009 07:23 PM

Mine is a mini 12 and its RAM is limited only to 1 gig. I tried using my usb as a device for boosting Vista's performance...so far, I am not quiet sue if there is indeed an improvement .... can anyone share his/her experience...

By the way in stead of turning off my mini through shutdown option, I use the one which is the "short-cut" icon, which upon my next use of my mini will merely resume my former or last computing activity...by doing this I notice that the boot-up time is significantly decreased to less than half a minute...am I doing it right? or should I use the regular shutdown option to turn off my mini...please help...

**ghosthunter** · June 12th, 2009 07:39 PM

Originally Posted by attyallanlatras

Mine is a mini 12 and its RAM is limited only to 1 gig. I tried using my usb as a device for boosting Vista's performance...so far, I am not quiet sue if there is indeed an improvement .... can anyone share his/her experience...

I am not sure about Vista's ready-boost but it might be better to increase the swap file size on the HDD itself since the onboard HDD is much faster than the transfer-rate of any USB flash drive you can connect to your netbook.

By the way in stead of turning off my mini through shutdown option, I use the one which is the "short-cut" icon, which upon my next use of my mini will merely resume my former or last computing activity...by doing this I notice that the boot-up time is significantly decreased to less than half a minute...am I doing it right? or should I use the regular shutdown option to turn off my mini...please help...

There are two alternatives to shutting down Windows. Those are SLEEP and HIBERNATE. Of the two, sleep would be faster because the PC's system is just in a low power state, only using a trickle of power to keep the RAM and other critical components to "remember" their last state. Hibernate mode forces the computer to write it's current state to a file on the HDD and then powers down. Sleep uses a bit of power while hibernate doesn't.

If you use your netbook often, sleep might be a better option as it gets you back on your desktop in the minimum amount of time. You can config the power button of your netbook to do a shutdown, hibernate or sleep mode.

With my netbook, my power button enables hibernate. Shutting the lid/screen would activate sleep mode. Full shut down can only be activated via the Windows START button.

**attyallanlatras** · June 12th, 2009 07:45 PM

"I am not sure about Vista's ready-boost but it might be better to increase the swap file size on the HDD itself since the onboard HDD is much faster than the transfer-rate of any USB flash drive you can connect to your netbook."

Thanks for the immediate response...by the way, how will I increase the swap file size on my HDD? I'm not an IT person....

**ghosthunter** · June 12th, 2009 07:56 PM

Originally Posted by attyallanlatras

Thanks for the immediate response...by the way, how will I increase the swap file size on my HDD? I'm not an IT person....

Generally you should just leave the settings to "automatic" but if you want to increase the virtual memory, in Windows XP you just right click the MY COMPUTER and click PROPERTIES. Then ADVANCED and SETTINGS under PERFORMANCE. Click ADVANCED again and SETTINGS under Virtual Memory.

Do your changes and click SET and press OK. Windows will prompt you should reboot for the chances to take place.

Not sure about Vista but it should be similar.

**impulzz** · June 12th, 2009 11:21 PM

i tried using the ready boost for vista and i really didn't notice any performance improvement. but upgrading to 2gb ram malaki improvement.

**ghosthunter** · June 13th, 2009 01:00 AM

Although kinda too late for the TS, I would have avoided the Dell Mini 12 even if it looked really great. Its limited system upgrade path would have been a deal breaker for me.

**ghosthunter** · June 13th, 2009 01:03 AM

Although kinda too late for the TS, I would have avoided the Dell Mini 12 even if it looked really great. Its limited system upgrade path would have been a deal breaker for me.