HP is reportedly not including Intel's Turbo Memory technology in any of its Centrino Pro notebooks claiming it represents poor value and that it limits flexibility. Intel's Turbo Memory, formerly known as Robson flash memory, uses embedded NAND flash memory to supposedly reduce the time it takes for a computer to power up, to access programs, and to write data to the hard drive taking advantage of Windows Vista features like ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive.
Many of the major notebook vendors such as Acer, Dell and Toshiba will include Turbo Memory in their new machines. HP on the other hand ran some tests and saw little improvement, in fact, the greatest improvement came as a result of adding more actual RAM to the system.
"We added 1GB of RAM and saw a much higher improvement in performance compared to using any of the ReadyBoost or Robson technology," Doddridge said. He added that: "If you have enough system RAM in the system already, ReadyBoost doesn't give you a lot."
Among other reasons HP cited was the fact that you can't use Intel Turbo Memory and ReadyBoost at the same time, which would mean that having Turbo Memory enabled - which comes at a maximum size of 1GB - would stop a customer from using a 2GB USB stick to boost the computer's memory with ReadyBoost.