Add New Hardware to a Computer has always been a simple Control Panel application in Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows 98, which was also used to initially install new hardware on an operating system. Both these operating systems support hot-swappable devices. In other words, they allow a computer to be powered on and then switched off remotely without restarting it. On machines with permanently installed hardware, you could either plug the new device into the machine while it’s running (for hot-swappable devices), or you could turn the machine off and then restart it (with permanently installed hardware).

20 However, there have been major changes in the hardware trends that Microsoft has implemented for Windows 7. The new hardware components that ship with the operating system are much more robust, and the setup procedures for these new devices are much simpler than what we had seen with the older operating systems.

21 A new hardware feature that comes with Windows 7 is called a Memory State Machine. This is a form of smart memory which allows a software program to have more control over how the memory is configured. For instance, you will be able to change the data transfer rate from one type to another. You can also set the software to automatically adjust itself so that the memory speed will not be affected. Another example is when the system is shutting down, the memory state machine will automatically switch the memory configuration to the fast mode so that the operating system will be ready for shutdown without having to wait for a completely loaded memory.

21 Setting this memory access limit depends on your actual needs. There are situations where you might want to set a large memory limit. In some cases, the computer might run slow because of all the open memory resources. To prevent this from happening, you should create as much temporary space as possible and make sure that the memory usage is properly monitored. If your memory starts to go slow, you might be able to increase the size of the temporary files. However, if you are transferring huge data files, you might need to use a software device for storing the data in RAM instead of on the hard disk.

Hardware-based robots can be used in data structures that are relatively large. However, they cannot achieve optimum performance if the memory that they access is not constantly available. On the other hand, software robots can be updated manually whenever the manufacturer decides to update their firmware. They can also optimize themselves automatically based on the current settings.