Microsoft QLF-00195 manual Start, Shutdown, and Resume, Search and Indexing, ReadyBoost

Windows 7 for You: Works the Way You Want

Speed, Reliability, and Responsiveness

Start, Shutdown, and Resume

Windows 7 is ready when you are. It’s designed to start, hibernate, and shut down faster than Windows Vista. We also focused on ways to resume from sleep more quickly and reliably. And because resuming from sleep is much faster than rebooting your PC, you can use sleep when you really need your PC to come to life quickly.

Search and Indexing

When looking for information, you want answers, not delays. Search and indexing are both much faster now, because Windows 7 includes all the performance improvements from Windows Search 4.0, a Windows technology that indexes all the files on your PC, as well as several other significant new perfor- mance optimizations. Sorting and grouping of search results are significantly faster too. (See pages 34–37 for a more detailed discussion of improvements to Windows Search.)

ReadyBoost

PCs that are low on memory frequently swap data to disk, which can make performance lag. With Microsoft ReadyBoost™ technology, which we introduced in Windows Vista, you can use a flash memory device to cache frequently used data, which in turn makes your PC more responsive. With ReadyBoost in Windows 7, you can use multiple flash devices—such as USB keys, Secure Digital cards, and internal flash devices—at the same time.

Improved Memory Utilization

We’ve worked hard to reduce overall memory requirements in Windows 7. For example, hundreds of runtime components now use less memory, while the core memory needs are smaller when the computer is idle. Windows 7 can reduce the memory requirements for each open window by up to 50 percent. In addition, we’ve introduced trigger start services, an innovative feature that launches system services only when they’re needed and reduces the number of programs competing for system memory.

Solid State Drives

Solid-state drives (SSDs), an alternative to traditional hard disk drives, are becoming more popular. This popularity is partially due to the fact that SSDs are typically faster than conventional hard disk drives. We designed Windows 7 to work well with SSDs so you’ll have a chance to experience improved PC perfor- mance, more consistent responsiveness, increased battery life, superior ruggedness, quicker startup times, and reductions in noise and vibrations. Features such as disk defragmentation, Microsoft Super- Fetch™ memory management technology, and ReadyBoost (described above) are designed to improve system responsiveness and performance when data is being retrieved from traditional hard disk drives. In Windows 7, these features respond to a computer’s configuration and automatically turn themselves off for the newer, faster SSDs, where they are not necessary, which helps free up system memory.

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