You bring up an interesting point, SicPunk.
Why is it that one of the new vista features is to utilize whatever memory you have plugged into your system to chache common-use files (USB memory sticks, MP3 players, or whatnot) in order to speed up your system...
Yet at the same time, Windows architecture is requiring us to keep a page file (AKA Virtual Memory) on the Hard Drive.... the slowest component in the computer.
Then there are these battery backed up RAM drives.. and what is one of the most common uses? Put your page file on them so that Windows is faster!
Let's see.. why do we have virtual memory in the first place? Because M$ in their finite wisdom decided that "If programs need more RAM than the computer posesses, we'll copy the contents of current memory to the hard drive, and when that address space gets called up, we'll save out the new stuff and re-load the old from the hard drive - and.. we'll call it virtual memory, a page file, a swap file..."
That was in the begining of the 32 bit era as we know it. When 386DX was king and Windows v3.1 promised us the ability to run any current program without needing tons of RAM - just turn on 386 enhanced mode and create a swap file!
Now where are we? Even though we can put 2GB Ram into a system and not even blink... We still have Virtual Memory. We hate how slow each successive version of windows is, so we copy our page files to RAM drives.
In other words, we keep a file on a RAM disk to simulate more RAM.
Ironic.
Ok, I'm done rambling and ranting.
IDEV