Oh contrare mon frair. It makes a world of difference. On my HP dv6205en lappy it's like night and day. I have a dual core Intel with 1.5 gigs of ddr2 667 ram and a 80gig sata drive. When the usb stick is in, it accesses the files quicker than with out it. The minimum for the stick I think is 1 gig. WalMart has the PNY usb 1gig for around 20 dollars US money.