This comment was not posted at the Addicted To Decorating page on SiteBuildIt: Don’t know why. Don’t particularly care why. It’s Kristi’s choice.

But I’ll post it here.

So the Forums are closed again. Open, close, open, close… what is SBI but a swing door for cats? Really… they are still shovelling about WordPress, WordPress.com, Wealthy Affiliate… whoever is the next strawman that needs to be knocked down… to convince customers to buy!

Wow! Now there are only 12,035 sites using SBI… what happened to the other 27,365 sites that used to use it? All gone, I guess. That’s still an awful lot of people willing to throw away $300+ for a website builder that offers very little.

I went back to WordPress after leaving SBI, and quite frankly, never looked back. I can do everything that SBI used to make me wait months for; it’s cheaper, more effective, more options, more themes… Of course, it’s not free… but then being in business isn’t free.

As an ex-customer… I’m appalled at the reaction that some people who still believe in Ken Evoy have. Seriously! Just because I choose one service, and you choose another, why do they have the temerity and shame to call someone a ‘bad’ person… What are they? 9 years old?

It’s a product, a service, a SAAS, not a moral choice! So, SBI believers, focus your arguments on the quality of the product, do not use an ad hominem attacks on Kristi who worked her ass off to create an exemplary business both on and off SBI!

Kristi, and many other ex-SBI customers, have done their own research, spent countless hours working within the SBI system, and on many other pieces of software to build their sites. They’ve come to similar conclusions about SBI from a variety of places: that it basically is not just less effective than WordPress… that SBI oversells its tools, overhypes its products, then turns round and blames the customers for not getting it right when inevitably many of them fail.

At one point, SBI represented almost all that was wrong with the Web as Google saw it: spam pages, low-value content, poor quality link farms, customer content that just fed the Gooble bot; until Google saw the entire industry trying to undermine its own index.

While SBI reeled, many people realized the old game had changed, but still SBI encouraged its customers to go down that path, before publishing endless reports into the changes @ Google. Unfortunately, by blaming its customers, chastising WordPress for its inadequacies… and creating a strawman to beat … it inadvertently exposed its own lack of understanding about the monster it had created for all to see; that SBI’s own products failed to deliver on their promises. Then the number of registered domains dropped from 39,292 to approximately 12,000 domains now. What does that tell you? Customers leaving in droves tells its own stories that your insults and ad hominem attacks cannot cover up.

So to quote you: I suggest you do some more research into the real history of SBI, and if you can’t say anything nice to or about Kristi after you realize the truth, please have the decency to not say anything at all. We will respect your silence way more than if you start opening your gob and shouting it off from the nearest rooftop about how good SBI is, and how Saint Evoy will save the world. It isn’t, he won’t. There you go.

However, I would strongly suggest that you read the books by Ken Evoy from the early days. There’s actually good advice in there for new infopreneurs and online webmasters. He really seemed to have touched on something that Google would later pick up on. Just don’t buy his product, for the simple reason: it doesn’t deliver any more.

Are you looking for a solution for a slow running Windows PC? There is one often overlooked method that gives an older PC a boost. Windows ReadyBoost is a simple-to-adopt and affordable solution to speeding up a PC running Windows Vista or later and uses older or slower hard disks. This article explains what ReadyBoost can do, what the requirements are, and how to set it up.

What is ReadyBoost?

Each time your system needs to read or write to the hard disk, there is a delay before the task is complete. ReadyBoost is a feature of Windows that improves the computer’s speed by creating a cache on a flash memory device instead of on the hard disk itself. This cache will store and retrieve data for the Windows system to use more quickly.

the ‘second’ old PC needs Windows ReadyBoost..

Setting up Windows ReadyBoost on the slower PC is an effective strategy to reducing the typical bottleneck of slower disk speeds caused by frequent usage. Though flash devices can be slower than traditional hard disks in longer or more data intensive tasks, Windows maximizes the performance by choosing where to cache the data. This results in overall snappier responsiveness in your system.

What does ReadyBoost need?

To set up Windows ReadyBoost on your system, you will need a USB flash drive plugged into a USB2.0+ socket. ReadyBoost also works with SD cards and Compact Flash cards through a memory card reader, but Microsoft advises that this may not be as efficient. Your drive or card needs to have a minimum amount of shared space of at least 256MB. However, because the ReadyBoost frequently access the drive or card, I would recommend reserving a thumb drive or card only for that purpose.

Windows ReadyBoost will impact the performance and life of your card, so sharing it for other purposes exposes other data to corruption or loss if the unit fails. Nowadays SD cards and thumb drives are very inexpensive; in fact, there are probably a few suitable ones lying around. If the system is older, or you are not sure about its capabilities, then borrowing a USB drive is the best way to find out if it is compatible with ReadyBoost.

Setting up Windows ReadyBoost

Simply insert the USB thumb drive into the USB slot or push the memory card into the attached reader. Windows will automatically test the drive for ReadyBoost capability. If the device meets the ReadyBoost minimum requirements, Windows will provide an option in ‘Autoplay’ to set it up.

Then open the File Manager and right click on the thumb drive, and open the ‘Properties’ tab. If a ‘ReadyBoost’ tab is located on the properties menu (on the fifth tab, located between ‘Sharing’ and ‘Customize’ on Windows 7, etc.), the computer has recognized the USB key as Windows ReadyBoost compatible.

There are two options to consider for the drive: ‘Dedicate this device to ReadyBoost’ or ‘Use this device.’ There is usually a recommended amount, but it is possible to select up to the maximum reserved space of 4Gb in FAT32 if you choose ‘use this device.’ The ‘dedicate this device’ takes over the entire device regardless of its size, and there are no further options. It is not possible to use more than 4GB on FAT32 due to limitations in the file structure.

After clicking ‘Apply,’ the system will create the cache file on the device and begin to use the space for accessing data. The initial setup may require about 30 seconds to set up, but you should notice an increase in responsiveness on older hardware.

Limitations Do Apply

Lower end or older hardware will experience much bigger improvements than newer machines. But even newer machines will still benefit from a boost. If the system is limited in other ways, then improvement in speed may only be occasional or temporary. New machines running SSDs will probably not experience much of a boost.

As a quick fix, it will extend the life of older hardware, add a little pep to computer performance, and come at little or no extra cost. Money saved! Next!

Postscript

At the suggestion of a ReadyBoost article by TechRepublic, I’m trying out the ‘exFAT’ format instead of NTFS. Give it a whirl! It was quick to reformat…!