The ECU Group plc :: Market Commentary 'blog'

The ECU Group plc :: Market Commentary 'blog': "G20: A damp squib"

Neil is in a downbeat mood today as the G20 meet in London.

Tearing into the Governor of the Bank of England

No-holds barred comments about Mervyn King from Neil MacKinnon in his blog today: http://www.ecugroup.com/resources/MarketCommentary.cfm

IMF downcast about the UK

Neil MacKinnon from The ECU Group discussed the recent IMF and Institute for Fiscal Studies negative views on the UK.

More available at http://www.ecugroup.com/resources/MarketCommentary.cfm.

Record levels of US public to private debt ratio.

Neil MacKinnon from The ECU Group discussed a brightening outlook for GBP and the record levels of US public to private debt ratio.

http://www.ecugroup.com/resources/MarketCommentary.cfm

Block Annoying Pop-Ups?

Block Annoying Pop-Ups?

No thank you, but I would like to block stupid toolbars from being bundled with every utility I try and install.

Open Letter to Google:

Get your own browser, distribute it with whatever toolbars you like. Please leave my browsers alone.

Windows Vista ReadyBoost

Seeing the problems in compatibility people have been having with their various USB memory sticks / thumb drives, I was keen to see if the sticks I had lying around would work.

My trusty Kingston DataTraveler U3 1G failed immediately and the ReadyBoost application log showed it had a pitiful random read speed of less than 500 KB/secs.

I noticed that the default allocation unit size was 4096 bytes, so I reformatted in FAT32 with 512 bytes, retested and received a rather splendid 5129 KB/sec random read speed.

I initially tried to up the ReadyBoost cache size from the suggested 870MB to the full capacity of the stick, but this failed totally and ReadyBoost wouldn't start. I deleted the cache file and recreated one, at the recommended size, and it has run like that ever since.

I've done a similar trick on other machines I've played with and half of the sticks I've tried, that initially don't show the performance necessary to run ReadyBoost will run if reformatted in the smallest allocation unit size they support. Give it a go!

I've not noticed any performance differences however, unless swapping between really memory intensive applications, it didn't improve performance in situations like 5-6 Office 2007 apps running.

If you are looking for the ReadyBoost logs, to see the performance of your own sticks, it's buried in Computer Management > Event Viewer > Applications and Services Logs > Microsoft > Windows > ReadyBoost > Operational.

JavaScript Back Command

I haven't found a downside to this command; it simply jumps back one page it the browser's history. I suppose having Java disabled might be a problem...

javascript:history.go(-1)

Also damn handy if you want to throw a visitor back a specified number of pages (like through a click-wrap page).