Does ReadyBoost affect the life of the flash memory?

[alexanderthegreat]

I've bought a new USB Flash drive. I wanted to use it for Vista's ReadyBoost feature.

Now, before buying I had read this wikipedia article on ReadyBoost. It said there that a microsoft official(Tom Archer to be precise) had said that ReadyBoost won't wear out the flash drive and that the drive should last 10+ years! He says so here officially:-

Q: Won't this wear out the drive?
A: Nope. We're aware of the lifecycle issues with flash drives and are smart about how and when we do our writes to the device. Our research shows that we will get at least 10+ years out of flash devices that we support.
Source:*blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx

Anyhow, that's Microsoft we're talking about! Can anyone confirm this? I know Readyboost itself isn't 10 years old, but can anyone(anyone having a ReadyBoost experience) tell me that they've been using this for <insert number> years and it hasn't hurt the performance of the flash memory in the least?(or most? or average?) And that the Flash memory still works as good as new?(or maybe even fine?)

Also, I wan't to know if I am an idiot... I mean if I bought the right thing(Sandisk or Transcend)

PS:I have already searched for presence of such a topic! Nothing found.(I should include this in my siggy)

 

[ThinkFree]

Yes, it does effect the pen drive life. No company is going to find fault in it's own product, so it is obvious that Microsoft officials will say it doesn't harm the flash drive .

 

[casanova]

Flash drives have a limit like 10000 writes. With Readyboost this writes will be used rapidly and would definitely affect it.

But at the same time, it offers a good bet as flash memory is cheaper than RAM.

 

[freshseasons]

Flash memory is cheaper but can never- never -never be compared to real physical memory that is ram.
Its spread all over the internet, and i know it for reason, that Readyboost doesnt work and if it does it will take you 10+ plus years of meditation to concentrate and feel the difference.
Save money and get a Ram instead.