From Starbucks to Software

New Blog

Sun, 02 Sep 2007 20:16:38 GMT

Yeah I migrated this blog to blogspot. I figured Google already knows everything about me, might as well let them in on my personal life too.

Boosting Visual Studio Performance with ReadyBoost

Sun, 24 Sep 2006 05:25:03 GMT

Maybe this isn't a big deal to some developers who have access to the latest and greatest machines through their workplace, but I am always looking for a way to optimize my Dell Inspiron 600m laptop to make life easier for myself. I opted to use my personal 1.6ghz Pentium M machine for my work over a hand-me-down machine or a desktop workstation. I wanted something portable and decently equipped, as I often do a lot of work at... can you guess? The nearest Starbucks. At any rate, I do suffer frequently from performance issues related to the fact that my laptop just wasn't designed to run Windows Vista, Visual Studio 2003, SQL 2005, Excel, Outlook, 10 IE7 tabs, and WMP all while compiling my VS solution.

Needless to say, I try to trim down on my open programs as much as possible. I recently installed Windows Vista RC1 on my machine as well, which I think does a slightly better job at multitasking than XP. Earlier today I discovered a Vista feature called ReadyBoost. At first I thought it was some kind of quickboot/diagnostic utility which resides on a USB drive, but upon closer inspection I found that it actually acts as a write-through cache for some system paging processes. The technology claims that while hard discs may have faster data rates than any non-volatile USB device, their performance really suffers when it comes to small random I/O sequences versus large sequential I/Os. In simple terms, Microsoft describes it as something like "upgrading your system's memory without opening the case". Obviously, I was intrigued.

I searched around a bit more and came across this site which lists devices tested against the ReadyBoost feature. Apparently, not just any device will do. ReadyBoost requires devices to live up to certain benchmark criteria and runs a benchmark once on any USB drive attached to the machine. Only have an old Sandisk 128mb drive laying around (256mb is the minimum), I went ahead to Best Buy and found a Sandisk Cruzer Micro 1gig on sale for $25. Reviews on the above site said the 512mb version worked, and another said the 2gig version didn't work, so I was holding my breath during the 10 second benchmark period. It worked! I checked the box to use the drive as a ReadyBoost drive. It gave me some recommended options, including using around 917mb of the drive for ReadyBoost. I gladly agreed and immediately I noticed results. My applications seemed significantly more responsive. By significant I mean I could tell the difference plainly between having the ReadyBoost drive plugged in and not. Visual Studio didn't really compile much faster, but other parts of it definitely improved, such as searching, switching between files and dialogs, form displays, and debugging. The feature actually works pretty good too. I've had no issues with it thus far. I've unplugged the stick randomly a few times and no problems or data loss or anything like that. All in all, I think the the investment was well worth the results and I plan to use it to decrease the amount of time I spend waiting for things to load while developing.

Jeff Mixon

Introduction

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 23:14:46 GMT

Hello. Let me introduce myself. My name is Jeff Mixon, a recent addition to the development community. I am writing this blog mainly for two reasons. The first and probably foremost reason is to enhance my own knowledge and skills in the areas of C# .NET and related development. They say whatever you teach (or blog, perhaps) to others, you retain 95% of that information. Hopefully that is the case here. Secondly is because my foray into the development world might be slightly different than most others. I have a job at a small development firm in Jacksonville writing Visual C# .NET applications. I also find myself writing things such as SQL queries or stored procedures and regular expressions on a daily basis. This may not seem that interesting yet, but it is when you consider that just 4 weeks ago I had never even seen any code before, ever--much less C# code. I didn't know what a stored procedure was. And all ".NET" really meant to me was an update I can vaguely recall downloading from Windows Update. In fact, up until 4 weeks ago I would have said my greatest codin g accomplish was a batch file I wrote for a network once to run some other scripts with error checking. This blog will basically chronicle my plunge from a semi-regular work schedule at a local Starbucks into the world of high-level language programming. Hopefully others thinking about getting started or just starting as I am will find some of my observations useful at best or entertaining at least. How I actually landed that job with zero prior experience? Well, that's a whole different blog. ;)

Jeff Mixon

Blog list: Blog list

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 00:27:43 GMT

Sedodream.com
MSBuild, C#, Visual Studio, and more...

Book List: Book List

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 19:22:47 GMT

Frank Herbert: Dune: Heretics of Dune
What I am currently reading
John Sharp: Microsoft Visual C# 2005
What I am currently reading