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…)

Amazon launched an MP3 download service today. That’s right, MP3 as in no DRM. As in no iTunes store required. Oh and there’s no extra fee to take out the DRM. It looks like tracks are $0.99 each.

Amazon has now fired a shot across Apple’s bow. If Amazon Unbox wasn’t enough warning, Amazon is now going after Apple’s digital core.

Want proof? The free download to test your Amazon MP3 downloader is Energy by The Apples In Stereo. Does anyone really believe that this is a coincidence?

The beauty for me is that I don’t have to use the pig known as iTunes. I love the player agnostic part of this. This is a nice feature for my windows centric setup.

As for video I’ve had really good results viewing new pilots on Amazon Unbox. The process has worked well on both my UMPC and my media center TV. A 10′ interface for the TV would be nice but the UMPC was just fine.

Now I can stuff my UMPC and Smartphone with media. who needs to get work done!

The original Q1 has taken a lot of hits for having a compact flash slot. It’s considered old tech. But the CF slot holds my GPS CF card just fine and gives me GPS capability without any pieces hanging off. Sticking out maybe, but not hanging off. If this ever becomes available in the US I’ll be able to add HSDPA to my Q1 too.  Bring it on SanDisk!

LCDArms makes Tablet PC Arms for Desks. What I like of their holders is that is very… “universal”. Practically you could use it in any of the Tablet PC because the arms and the pieces that hold the Tablet PC can be moved around so they are not in the way of any of the ports or slots of the Tablet PC.

I have contacted them trying to find out if they have any plans to make this kind of arms for UMPCs that could be used in Cars.

I got a letter from the Sling Media folks between Christmas and New Years, they want their Slingbox back! I was a beta tester for the new Slingbox versions and my butt ugly beta Slingbox has been happy slinging video to my UMPC for months. (It’s ugly so if it shows up on eBay they’ll know it was a beta unit.) After I read the letter, the phrase, “When they pry it from my cold dead hands” flashed through my mind. That’s how addictive a Slingbox is.

Now don’t get me wrong, the Sling folks are entitled to their beta unit back. I don’t remember from the initial beta info if I agreed to give it back or not, I’m just surprised that they’re asking now, several months after the new Slinboxes have been released. I expected to hear something soon after the release. 

So Binky the Q1 and my SlingBox Pro are getting a divorce. Binky will have to start dating my original Slingbox again but I’m going to miss some of the Pro’s functionality. With the Pro’s multiple inputs, I could split my cable signal and not worry about changing the channel my family was watching. Now when I’m out of town, I’ll have to call my wife before I start changing channels remotely.

I’m not bitter, well maybe a little, but that’s the breaks when you beta test. Now if an Acer Ferrari Laptop with Vista Ultimate on board shows up, I don’t think I’ll have to return that!

I got the Holux Compact Flash GPS receiver and Microsoft Streets and Trips 2007 for Christmas. Given the lack of information about CF GPS receivers for X,P I was expecting problems. I wanted CF so I could avoid another USB cable sticking out of the Q1. I succeeded and now I have a large beak sticking out of the top of the Q1, but no more wires. The process was painful and 3 days of rain didn’t make it easier for me to figure out how this whole thing is supposed to work. Now I know, so I can tell you.

For XP, ignore any directions that come with the unit. Insert the CF GPS. Cancel the Windows install dialogue. Install the drivers from the CD. If doesn’t find the GPS, run the install from the app now on your HD. (C:\program files\holux). You can install the utility as well. It’s a CE utility but it works with XP. Now go outside, run the utility and sit while it finds satellites. No light means the GPS is not being accessed by the software. Solid light means that it’s looking for satellites. Blinking light, it’s locked on satellites and working. (I would have reversed the last two light patterns but that’s just me.)

Install Streets and Trips 2007. Beware, I didn’t have my USB DVD player and the install took an hour over a wireless connection to a shared DVD. Open Streets and Trips, activate the GPS. Go outside and wait. It took forever to find the satellites the first time. I was determined to sit out there in the drizzle until it worked and it finally did. After that, it’s much faster.

The CF sticks out more than 2 inches (2.25″ for the engineers in the house) so it definitely detracts from the Q1’s good looks, but it doesn’t seem to be a battery hog. I didn’t notice much of battery drain while using it and given that these cards are most often targeted to PDA’s that shouldn’t surprise me. There is also a connector for an external antenna but I haven’t needed it in the car so far.

Overall I can say that I’m happy with the setup while I figure out how to navigate Streets and Trips (bad pun intended). I just wish someone (Holux, Microsoft?) would have told me how it’s supposed to work so I’d know if the problems were mine or the unit.

At what point does a “product” become vaporware?

RAM Mounts announced their car mounting cradle for the Q1 in mid-November. They had splashy graphics on their website but the fine print said it wouldn’t be available until mid-December.

So I waited. It’s tough to order one, every order link takes you to a dealer page. Today I tried to order the full suction cup mount for the Q1. My dealer called RAM and found out that they won’t be available for at least another month, but the Q1 mount is still featured prominently on the Tablet PC Mounts page and the release date still says mid-December. The dealer didn’t want to take the order because he wasn’t convinced it would ship in a month.

I understand this with some products like the U132 EVDO USB adapter. There were lots of pitfalls in making something like that work and they were only a month late. For the RAM mount, they already make all the parts except the Q1 specific cradle. There shouldn’t be any technology issues so is it a supply thing? Given the prominent Made in the USA info on the website, they shouldn’t be waiting for these to ship from Asia.

Yes, I’m whining a little. I’m suffering from over promise under deliver. Perhaps RAM Mounts had been built up a little too much by others. Perhaps it’s post Christmas overload, but at what point do we get to declare a product vaporware? When it’s late without updates? 3 months? Six months? A year?

So RAM, I’m willing to pay full price (about $60) plus shipping for the RAM-B-166-202-SAM1U. I have my credit card in hand and a dealer on the phone. If you can’t make that happen, send me a review unit until the production units are ready so I can say some nice things about you.

I actually got several of the things on my UMPC add on list for Christmas. We opened some gifts early due to family commitments so I’ve been playing with new toys since Saturday.

First up is the Q1U USB microphone from Samson. I wanted this for some podcasting I plan to do in the new year, including some interviews at Microsoft’s Convergence conference. With the Q1 UMPC and the Samson Q1U microphone, I should have a really light and powerful podcasting rig. The USB part is important because the Q1 doesn’t have a microphone connector. Yes, the built in array mic is fabulous, but I don’t want to shove the whole Q1 in someone’s face during an interview, so USB is the only option.

I was absolutely thrilled with the Samson microphone. It’s solid, like a real mic should be. Everything about it looks and feels professional. It comes with a 10 foot (3+ meter) USB cord and a desktop stand. The desktop stand has an adapter to fit on a traditional mic stand as well.

The best part? It just works. Plug it in, XP recognized the mic, configured it and I was recording in Audacity in about 15 seconds. The out of the box recording volume was a little low but I hadn’t touched a single setting yet. This is an example of how technology should work. It doesn’t matter how much eggnog you’ve had, you can install this microphone.

This is a different experience from my Holux CF GPS receiver and Microsoft Streets and Trips 2007 but that’s another review and it is going to require a lot more eggnog.