Select USB flash drives from SanDisk with capacities of 1GB or more that ship after mid-February will be compatible with Windows ReadyBoost, as will select flash memory cards available later in the year, the company adds.

The announcement was made during a press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show in the Las Vegas Convention Centre.

Windows ReadyBoost, a performance enhancement feature new with Windows Vista, is designed to create a cache of frequently needed data in otherwise unused space on a USB flash drive or flash memory card.

 According to the company, his cache remains available even when the computers random-access memory, or RAM, is fully occupied - speeding up system performance and improving the user experience, especially when multiple or large applications are running.