Where do I run portable Palemoon?

[sulasno]

Running WinXP, I create a RAMDISK and copy portable Palemoon to it;

before the system is shut down, I copied Palemoon back to the original location

but if I do not intend to save anything, I simply shut down WinXP and nothing is saved

[Kushan]

How much faster is Pale Moon when running from a RAM disk? It's pretty quick as it is, I can't imagine that you'd get much of an improvement other than maybe startup time.

[sulasno]

read/write access is definitely faster than the hard disk

[Kushan]

Well yeah, but what I mean is how does that translate into real-world performance? Once PM is up and running, do websites load any faster? I wouldn't have thought that the HDD would be a bottleneck.

[diNovoM]

Yeah, also browsing is a bit faster than using an HDD, also start-up for sure is faster. But i think installing the browser itself to an ramdisk when using SSD doesn't bring any advantage - here i only would recommend to outsource the cache etc. so temp data to ramdisk (that's still a bit faster and you avoid usage to get a longer lifetime). You might check the following site if you use an SSD and can read German language or any website-translate tool works for you: http://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/sh ... p?t=543445

Concerning sulasno's question: which RAMDISK- Tool do you use? I know ramdisk plus has an option to save data to HDD before shutting down.

[sulasno]

I wasn't aware that WinXP 32 bits only support a maximum of 3 GB when I upgrade the system to 4 GB RAM

For RAMDISK I am using OSF Mount; save to image file is available;
I mount the RAMDISK using command lines though

[diNovoM]

Yeah, some guys have found out windows xp can address 3,25Gb only i think (either i somehow read it depends on the mainboard so 3GB-3,75GB) after upgrading ram. But that it still happens - thought anybody knows up to now.

So your problem is that this isn't done automatically? In that case the only things coming to my mind are:
- install pale moon onto SSD or any other fast flash drive and just set cache to ramdisk which doesn't mind if deleted upon restart
- may there is an tool with the option to send commands during shut-down (but then you shouldn't have "tweaked" your xp with the option to kill programs after only a few ms so that it really can send that command and export ramdisk to HDD)

[sulasno]

I could simply put the batch file into the startup folder so that the RAMDISK is mounted upon start up; as I do not need the contents of the RAMDISK it is not necessary for me to save the image to a file and reload it during a reboot; I guess it would all depend of the user's requirements

setting the TEMP permanently to the RAMDISK doesn't seem to be a good idea since some files are required when installing applications that require a reboot; setting the browsers' cache to the RAMDISK is advisable when running the browsers from the hard disk since access is faster; but it seem too troublesome to change the configurations and hence prefer running the (portable) browsers from the RAMDISK

[diNovoM]

That's also an option, still you need to save ramdisk back to image if you change anything (option, bookmark etc.)

With TEMP you mean Windows TEMP with other software? Cause i can't think of any FF/PM Add-On that requires the pc to reboot. Sure on Windows TEMP - that is something you should think of (if there is anything required after reboot you have to temp re-enable hard-disk temp - done in 10 sec.). But changing FF/PM configuration for outsourcing cache only isn't that hard! Well, anyway, it's late so gn.

[Kushan]

Yeah, some guys have found out windows xp can address 3,25Gb only i think (either i somehow read it depends on the mainboard so 3GB-3,75GB) after upgrading ram. But that it still happens - thought anybody knows up to now.

Just to add to this a bit, I believe there's a bit more to the 32bit RAM addressing issue than meets the eye. I'm up for correction here, but after looking into the issue myself over the years, I believe that XP can address 4GB of RAM, but that also includes things like video card memory. So if you have a 512MB Graphics card, that gets deducted, as well as memory reserved for other bits of hardware and such. This is why there's a bit of debate as to how much RAM it can actually address (usually between 3.2GB and 3.8GB). It's probably easier to just assume that it can only handle "about" 3GB.
Still, if you have that much RAM, unless you're running a particularly old CPU or graphics card, I'd highly recommend upgrading to Windows 7 x64.

[sulasno]

that's where the problem will occur

I am running a virtual copy of Windows 7 on a 5 year old system

[diNovoM]

Hm, 5 years is vista-time and everything that runs on vista is able to run win7. But it may depends how good the machine was 5 years ago. Do you have any problems in the Win7x64sp1 Virtual Machine using actual drivers (not from the homepage like asus, hp, msi etc. if you bought it in one piece but the manufacturers of individual parts, also http://www.station-drivers.com/page/drivers.htm is a good source for newest drivers)

BTT: You're somehow satisfied with the known solutions? I would simply buy a small SSD (Corsair Force Series GT 60GB with MLC synchron and 80.000 IOPS recommended), install OS and FF on it and outsource RAM, that's the fast and easiest option possible (no need to create/load/save images). And if you once have an SSD you don't want to miss it anymore.

[sulasno]

it's a refurnished ThinkPad T60 after my 10 year old Acer's notepad's motherboard fried;
WinXP came with the ThinkkPad;

Running Win7 in VirtualBox without any problems though not sure whether the VGA is supported; will test playing Spider

present system hdd is 60 GB, with 4GB RAM and I use a 500GB USB external drive;
personally I am happy with it

I think if I am going to get a new system, I might skip Win7 and go to 8 directly; I am still waiting for confirmation that Win8 is 128 instead of 64 lol

[Kushan]

it's a refurnished ThinkPad T60 after my 10 year old Acer's notepad's motherboard fried;
WinXP came with the ThinkkPad;

Running Win7 in VirtualBox without any problems though not sure whether the VGA is supported; will test playing Spider

present system hdd is 60 GB, with 4GB RAM and I use a 500GB USB external drive;
personally I am happy with it

I think if I am going to get a new system, I might skip Win7 and go to 8 directly; I am still waiting for confirmation that Win8 is 128 instead of 64 lol

Windows 8 won't be 128bit, it's due out next year and no 128bit (consumer) processors are even close to being released. Remember, the first 64bit desktop processors, the Athlon 64's, were released in 2003 and we didn't get Windows XP x64 until late 2005.

I don't think we'll see 128bit processors for a while as the benefit from 64bit -> 128bit will be much less obvious than the benefit of going from 32bit to 64bit was to consumers (And the update of 64bit has been pretty slow - most people only bother if they're running more than 4Gb of RAM). I'd say we probably won't see 128bit go mainstream until the next decade, but who knows. In any case, Windows 8 will be 64bit for sure and so far 32bit builds have leaked, but hopefully by the time it hits retail, 64bit will be the mainstream.

If you're happy with your system in its current form, then that's fine, however if you are looking for a bit of an upgrade, Windows 7 is a worthwhile one.

[diNovoM]

it's a refurnished ThinkPad T60 after my 10 year old Acer's notepad's motherboard fried;
WinXP came with the ThinkkPad;

So it could be anything from http://geizhals.at/eu/251230 till http://geizhals.at/eu/255537. Well with 4GB of RAM this will be Win7x64 compatible for sure! I had an not much better Samsung Q210 Aura Tevy running with Win7x64.

Samsung's homepage had old drivers but with actual drivers for each component it was running just fine
For your IGP the following driver would be the best bet on Win7x64 Intel Grafiktreiber 7.15.10.1666 (15.12.4) 12. März 2009. It's for Vista x64 but most Vista drivers do run on Win7 too, just try it in your VM.

I think if I am going to get a new system, I might skip Win7 and go to 8 directly; I am still waiting for confirmation that Win8 is 128 instead of 64 lol

Uhm, why? There isn't any 128 bit CPU out there i think, and you won't be able to run 32 Bit Software (which is still common) - Windows only Provides 1 Compatibility Mode (check) so Win*x32 is 16/32 bit, Win*x64 is 32/64 and Win128 will be 64/128bit compatible only! Believe me, just get an SSD and install Win7 on it and you will be happy like .... idk.

EDIT: According to http://www.station-drivers.com/page/int ... aphics.htm Graphics Media Accelerator "Version 8.15.10.1930 (64bits) (15.12.75.4)" MIGHT work for you too! Or you check Intel: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchR ... gma+950%22

And if you ask: i recommended SATA 6Gb/s SSDs either the mainboard of your NB won't be able to to handle that so you don't get full speed, BUT its downward-compatible. So running at SATA II and you still have enough speed. MLC Synchron has even then it's advantage and when you upgrade to a new Laptop with native SATA 6Gb/s you will have full sped.

[Moonchild]

I think if I am going to get a new system, I might skip Win7 and go to 8 directly; I am still waiting for confirmation that Win8 is 128 instead of 64 lol

It'll probably be Windows v10 or higher before they have a 128-bit one -- and then it will be server OS before anything else.

Just look at how it took 8 years since the first 64-bit consumer processor (well, Intel architecture ones anyway, I used to have an Alpha 64-bit running Windows NT a long time ago) before people are finally starting to run more and more 64-bit OSes (with still 95% of the applications running on it not being 64-bit), with drivers and system software lagging behind something fierce as well...
So, give it 10 years before 128-bit might become somewhat mainstream, if they actually continue on that development path. As it is, the focus is more on increasing the number of cores, get more parallel tasking going on.