The Acer Aspire One has some interesting features going for it. One of which is more of an accident of the WIndows XP installation side: the second SD card slot. In Linux, it was a way to expand the somewhat-small storage of the SSD. Windows has a 120GB drive, a few gigs isn’t going to help you, and XP doesn’t support it anyways. So, what’s a second SD slot to do?
Maybe accelerating my system is the thing to do. Enter eBoostr, what’s been commonly called “ReadyBoost” for XP. Just like that fated feature, there is a lot of discussion to see whether it really does anything, either by performance or by battery life standards. Even reports on other blogs seem to ask the same question, and it all depends on the quality of the system. Just like with Vista ReadyBoost, the better the system, the less performance boost you get.
The Aspire One falls squarely at the middle of this line. 1GB of RAM is excellent for XP, but it’s not excessive. The processor is dual-core, but low-end and low power. The battery life is short with a small battery, so even gaining 15 minutes with no performance gain is worth it, especially with the 2GB card I am using being worth about five bucks, tops!
My first impression? It does seem to help a little, just from the sense that I do not see the hard drive working quite as hard. The Aspire One doesn’t have a light to denote access to the SD slot, so I cannot tell quite how much the cache is being hit (and you can trust the stats maybe, but it’s good to see more results).
You used eBoostr? ReadyBoost? Post your thoughts on it in the comments, my follow up will be soon.
