one of the new features in windows vista is the concept of readyboost.  readyboost is the part of those demos that you've seen someone stick a usb memory key in their laptop and boom they instantly increased their RAM.  well, kinda.

i needed a new usb key (lost mine) and decided to ensure i got one that was readyboost capable.  i opted for the sandisk cruzer micro 2gb.  namely because of the size and i liked the little switch-blade feature.  i decided my first use of it would be to see if could notice a difference in readyboost usage.

now, i should note that i do have a toshiba m400 (duo core) with 2gb ram already in place.  my machine is pretty snappy for me, but i wanted to see if multi-tasking would get better with readyboost.  what happens when you insert the usb device that is readyboost capable, you get a prompt asking you to allocate how much space.  after which your readyboost device now has a readyboost.sfcache file in it:

your machine is now taking advantage of this.  i will have to say that i did notice a few things operating a bit more snappier than usual, but for me nothing substantial.  my test of multitasking did show some better performance of some apps when i was using readyboost.  nothing scientific, just my observations.

i think readyboost comes into more advantage is on the lower end memory solutions...say a machine with 256/512 ram.  and here's where the important calculations come in.  in the great readyboost faq posted by tom archer, we can see that the recommendation is a 1:1 on the lower end and a 2.5:1 ratio for the higher end.  this means that if you have 512 ram and want to use 256 of your usb key to readyboost, you may not notice a difference.  likewise if you have a 1gb ram machine and a 4gb usb key and maximize the key usage, you may not see a noticeable difference (than you would if you allocated 2gb of the key).  something to note at least.

so if you have lower memory, and have a fast usb device, you may want to give it a try.  i plan on trying it on a few machines for our installfest happening in a few days...i'm sure there will be some machines with lagging memory that we may see a boost of energy with...

i'm about to generalize here, so forgive me :-).

i'm married.  my wife doesn't watch that much tv.  but she does watch the homewreckeroprah winfrey show.  as a result of that sometimes i get stuck watching them in the bedroom while she's watching etc.

recently oprah has been on this roadtrip across the country where...hold your breath...she actually drives.  this is actually quite a misnomer, because behind the car she's driving is a team of producers, personal trainer, make-up stylists, etc.  yeah, she's not roadtripping anything.

it is filmed in a bit of reality mode (cameras/microphones in the car) and really shows some candid comments (which i'm shocked she didn't edit out).  one such comment was their hotel situation.  she showed up at a hotel and had nothing but bad things to say about it.  now i've stayed at many a hotel/motel and i know some are better than others, but i've never come across any that were so horrible that i wouldn't have said anything.  instead oprah just belittled the place (note to oprah: if you don't like it, you should speak up before you consume the offering).  their next stop they spotted a hyatt and raved about this being a "real" hotel and that's how road trips across america happen.  no, they don't oprah.  maybe when i take a vacation with my wife yeah.  but add two screaming children, hours of "are we there yet" and food crap all over the car -- yeah, motel 6 will do as long as it doesn't smell like smoke.

earlier apparently there was an episode of how oprah had no clue what albertson's was.  helloooo, it's the largest grocery chain in the country?  then she stopped and purchased a pillow for the trip (understandably)...and then requested her friend to help her shop for sets of sheets.  wtf?  seriously.  are the hotel laundry services too good for you?  then there was a garage sale episode where she was so shocked that the family didn't say anything about the cameras and didn't ask who she was, etc.  maybe because they could give a rat's arse?

man, she's full of herself.  her true side is coming out though.  she's a gagoogillionaire who hasn't a clue to reality anymore.  she's not on the same plane with "us" and should stop acting like she is or trying to do this "get back to the people" campaigns.

sorry for the late notice, but if you haven't heard (and are interested), there will be a visual studio team system chat tomorrow at 10:00 am "california" time (for those of us 'zonies who don't convert time really well) -- that's 10:00 AM PDT for the rest of you.

come join members of the vsts team to talk about features available and features to come (database edition).  bring your tough questions!

join the chat on wednesday, oct 4 @ 10:00am PDT

links: chat link, calendar link, local time converter

UPDATE: visit http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2006/10/01/13547.aspx for the link to download SnopeIt!

if you've installed the visual studio tools for office beta 2 second edition (man everytime i read our product names, it hurts), you'll notice that when you create an add-in project, it automatically creates a setup project along side it for you -- great idea (since you'll need a method to deploy it anyway).

when i started to play around with the vsto tools and my SnopeIt add-in, the installer wasn't working for me.  it deployed fine, but outlook was giving a runtime load error.  after some investigation i figured it was something with security.  some colleagues were kind enough to point me to a solution.

an article on msdn titled 'Deploying Office Documents that Use Managed Code Extensions' outlines a setup helper class (among one method) to implement the trust mechanism required for the add-in.  I literally did a cut/paste of the code in a SetupHelper assembly, plopped it in to my setup custom actions and it worked great.

one thing i did have to change was the CustomActionData.  it indicated something like:

   1:  /path="[TARGETDIR]My Word Bookmarks_bin/My Word Bookmarks.dll"

i think the article was written for office 2003 add-ins and there may be a different deployment model hence the _bin folder.  i found it wasn't necessary and just changed it to (changing to your assembly of course):

   1:  /path="[TARGETDIR]My Word Bookmarks.dll"

this worked great for me.  so now that i have that worked out, here is the download link to the rough cut version of my simple SnopeIt add-in.  it simply launches snopes.com with the subject line -- like i said, simple.  i'm using this to learn more about the office 2007 development model though and will adjust when i get more time to some more features...any suggestions?

SnopeItSetup.msi

i don't know what happened...i was reading an article about how the cost of linux and windows are roughly the same and the next thing i know i see this photo on the internet...

there may have been some huge riot or something, but the penguin has bought it.