Laptop upgrades are not difficult to complete yourself, and there are three key upgrades that you can easily accomplish to make your laptop run faster.  These will also give your laptop a higher resale value when you decide to replace it.

One of the most simple laptop upgrades to complete yourself is to upgrade your operating system. If you are running Windows XP or Windows Media Center, upgrading to Windows Vista is a good idea.  You will be able to take advantage of the many features of Windows Vista, as well as enhance the speed of your system.  An upgrade to Windows Vista for the Home Basic edition is under $100 and is worth it to enhance the efficiency of your system. (More…)

I’ll admit my bias right away: I already have an HTC PocketPC. Despite all of it’s glaring little errors, I love the little guy. The screen is too small, the processor too slow and the built-in apps are too buggy. Does the new HTC PocketPC plus Windows Mobile 6 fix all of this? Possibly… I don’t know, but I’d sure like to find out!

The fine folks over at Mobility Site have an excellent unboxing/mini-review of the sexy little “UMPCjr” up right here. It sure does make me want to pull out the ‘ole credit card and over extend myself for an HTC Advantage. What’s the verdict?

I’m an edge user of mobile devices. I use feature the average user doesn’t know exists. I try to keep that in mind when looking at new devices but I’m still astounded at manufacturers who throw in a half implemented feature. While playing with my mom’s new iPhone, I got a bit of the techno lust. It’s a beautiful gadget and much of it is really intuitive. So I started thinking about whether I could live with the limitations (no 3g, no tethering, etc.). So I took her phone and tried stuff. Stuff that my Blackjack does well and stuff that it does poorly but acceptably, to see how the iPhone compares.

I learned that despite it’s rounded corners, the iPhone still has some rough edges. There’s an iPhone bug when used with Microsoft’s address book. The office phone number refused to sync. I know how many folks use MS address book? Well, my mom for one, she’s moving from paper and Outlooks seems like overkill.

No native Bluetooth support for music. Bluetooth headsets work great for the phone functions but you can’t listen to music with either a mono or a stereo headset. (I tried both). There’s a workaround, but the music keeps playing through the phone’s speaker so why bother. Also there are reports that iPod add-ons like iMuffs will work but should we really have to pay extra for stereo Bluetooth?

Yes I’m picking on Apple a little bit but EVERY phone manufacturer seems to have some feature that is poorly implemented. “Converged Device” doesn’t mean shove it all in the same case and don’t worry if things don’t work together. I’m still not sure why this so hard. Ask a few of us what we would like to see in a device. For example, There are tons of requests for mono music playback via Bluetooth. Why? Not quality, accessibility. Sometimes you just want a little unobtrusive background music. But no one seems to get that. Not HP, not Samsung, not Apple.

The best comparison I have is that the iPhone is like Lindsay Lohan. It’s beautiful. It’s talented and yet it may never live up to all of it’s potential. Perhaps as it matures, we’ll see that it can move beyond it’s current issues to be something really special, not just the attractive thing of the moment.

The Q1 UMPC and I went to San Diego a week ago. I started to blog about it earlier but then I remembered my rule about not mixing bourbon and blogging, so I held back… from blogging that is. (In fairness, I did a lot of blogging about the conference at DynamicAccounting.net but it was an accounting software conference not mobile devices.)

What Worked

Battery Life - The Q1 ultra mobile performed flawlessly on the coast to coast flight. Both coming and going I used the Samsung power bank and landed with a completely full internal Q1 battery each time. I watched movies both ways and got caught up on my Ze Frank and Wallstrip. Battery life with the Samsung power bank gets an A+.

OneNote and HSDPA - In the sessions I was able to take notes all day in One Note and I carried around a much smaller bag than most of the attendees. When WIFI wasn’t available, a Bluetooth connection to the Samsung Blackjack PDA worked just fine.

Office 2007 - I got a free copy of Office 2007 at the conference and I was feeling adventurous (or stupid) so I downloaded the 600+ mb clogging up the hotel’s wired connection and did the install It worked pretty well. Despite my success I don’t recommend doing this with your primary PC while out of town. I blame the bourbon.

Microphone - Audacity and the Samson Q1U microphone worked great for podcasting. I snagged an interview with Mary Jo Foley. It’s not often you get to turn the tables and interview the press! (I found out why she doesn’t have a TV!)

What Didn’t Work…

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This is one of the coolest Windows Mobile apps i’ve seen in quite awhile.  It’s  Windows Live Search for Mobile, essentially mobile  version of Windows Live Local Search, which it itself similar to Google Maps combined with Google Earth.  With it, you can search for any address or business and view it on a map (regular or arial hybrid), but that’s just a start.  You can get instant directions from one location to another, see real-time traffic information, and if you have a GPS receiver, put all of that onto a real-time scrolling view of your exact location, which can include turn-by-turn driving instructions.  All of the data is downloaded on the fly, so you need a Windows Mobile device with a mobile data connection, preferably a PDA phone.

In trying it out, I found that sometimes my download speeds weren’t fast enough to quite keep up with my vehicle speed so some of the images would remain missing as I went.  Still, this is one of the more fun apps I’ve seen and it came out just in time for me as I’m headed to a city I’ve never been to before next week on a business trip. You better believe that this will be guiding me from the airport to my destination.  Pocket PC Thoughts has a nice review of the application here, and you can download it for free and try it for yourself (it’s in beta) here.  It’s available for Windows Mobile as well as J2ME phones.

Ilium Software is making a push to support UMPCs.  First, they came out with the InScribe on-screen keyboard to make text entry easier, and now they’ve released an open beta of eWallet 5.0, which has some new features particularly useful to UMPC users.  Of foremost interest is the ability to sync your eWallet files to multiple PCs, even over ftp, so if you’ve got a UMPC and a desktop PC, both can maintain the same eWallet information easilyt.  Of course, the Windows Mobile version is included as well so you’ll have your info where ever you go.  And although it’s got the word “wallet” in the title, this sort of software is useful for carrying all sorts of private data.  Not only credit cards, but logins and passwords, or PINs or any other confidential information that you need to keep secret, but you need to keep on-hand.  It’s an open beta, so go grab the 30 day trial and give it a go.  The folks at Ilium would love to hear how you like it as well.

Ilium Software eWallet 5.0

The “mighty” S-XGen psuedo-UMPC is back in the news again (or at least it’s back in another of its parent company’s press releases). This time, the final units have been debuted to the public:

The company demonstrated the first working production units of the S-XGen™ Ultra Mobile Personal Computer (UMPC) to potential partners, investors and attendees at the company’s booth at the ValueRich show, in addition to holding offsite meetings.

John Domerego, President of SLWF subsidiary Seamless Internet, stated, “We are excited with the response our S-XGen™ UMPC received at the show and in private meetings. Of particular interest was the functionality of our folding keyboard and the enhanced communications afforded by not only Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capability but also integrated tri-band cell connectivity, which acts not only as an internet air card but also as a fully functional cell phone.”

I wonder if all of those “excited” people in those “private” meetings realize that this is 4 year-old rebadged technology? Of course, even old technology can still be exciting… my 4 year-old TiVo is still one of the coolest tech gadgets I own. So, who knows? Maybe this thing will have some legs (*snicker*)…

I’ve been playing with a new toy for the last couple of days — the Stowaway Sierra Bluetooth keyboard from Mobility Electronics (aka ThinkOutside, aka iGo).  It’s a very small yet full-sized keyboard which can be connected via Bluetooth to UMPCs, Tablet PCs, PDAs, and SmartPhones.  It comes with drivers for Windows XP, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and Symbian.  In fact, it includes several specialty keys made specifically for Windows Mobile (Pocket PC or Smartphone), but will work just fine on the other devices.

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