If you have a spare flash drive sitting around, you can plug in in your computer. The first time you plug that flash drive in, you may get a prompt asking whether you want to use it for ReadyBoost. If you've already used that drove on your PC and selected another option, like displaying the files on the drive, the ReadyBoost option may not appear.

But you can open Windows Explore, and right click on the listing for the flash drove. Then select "Properties". Click on the ReadyBoost tab. If the drive is too small, such as 256 MB, Windows may not let you use it for ReadyBoost. Otherwise, you can dedicate the entire drive, or just specify a certain amount of memory for ReadyBoost.

How the system works is a little complicated. Certain types of files are dynamically determined by Windows to be cached on the flash drive. There they can be read faster from the hard drive. The files are also encrypted, so that if the flash drive is removed from the PC, you don't have a lot of unencrypted personal data lying around on a flash drive. Suffice to say, ReadyBoost can substantially speed up some, but not all, operations your computer does.

It's worth noting that Intel has a similar system called Turbo Memory. This is a dedicated circuit inside of a PC. Turbo Memory is a completely different feature than ReadyBoost.

The system works with flash drives (or jump drives) and also some storage cards like SD cards for cameras.