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…)

After drooling over rumours of a multi-touch Apple sub-notebook recently, Dell has now given a demonstration of multi-touch on an ultraportable, called the Latitude XT.

The demo, which took place at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco, was filmed by ZDNet and is available on YouTube here.

Introducing the hardware, CEO Michael Dell said: “this tablet has some pretty interesting things about it. It’s the industry’s thinnest 12.1-inch convertible tablet [and] it’s got a screen that’s 25 per cent brighter than the nearest screen in the industry.” One of the “interesting things” certainly doesn’t appear to be the chassis design, which remains a dull black.

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Apple Insider and CNET are both reporting that sources at Asus have said their working with Apple on a Tablet PC.  CNET says while their constantly overwhelmed with Mac rumors, “Asus is Apple’s contract manufacturer. It’s one of the companies responsible for building the iBooks, PowerBooks and MacBooks of this world, so when their guys tell us they’re building an Apple Tablet, we believe them.”

I’m blogging this in inks in honor of Steve Jobs who did not announce a tablet PC today. Apparently he still has a Newton stuck up you know where! I can put my kids through college betting against a Mac Tablet PC.

My XP install on the Q1 has been deteriorating lately. iTunes occasionally refuses to run. (I blame Apple), the Slingplayer occasionally starts but the GUI never opens, Bluetooth occasionally locks and I’ve got some folders on the start menu that aren’t real. All of these except the folder issue get fixed with a reboot but I miss the snappy, freshly installed performance.

[On the folder side, I have a folder that I can add things to but the right menu doesn’t work. If I try to delete it or move it I get a file cannot be read from source or disk error. I’ve tried using the command line and searching the registry and the Google but no luck.]

I supposed it’s mostly my fault. I’m a serial software installer and remover. I know I need help. But it’s probably a 12 step program to get help and with software installation and removal it’s only about 4 steps to install something and less to remove it. (Yeah I know, 35 steps to completely remove it. That’s the part I keep not doing. I admit it, I have a problem, OK!)

Since this is my primary PC with digital certificates for processing payroll, specialized work apps, etc. rebuilding it is not a trivial exercise. Consequently, I was hoping to wait and put Vista on it once the drivers are released, but looks like I may be old and gray before that happens.

So now I have a dilemma, do I rebuild it in XP only to have to do it again in a few months or do I suffer waiting for Vista drivers?

(On a side note, I’ve had Office 2007 installed for less than a week and I’m totally, completely hooked. Perhaps I just have an addictive personality when it comes to tech. I fall into the power user category, I could get Excel to make me coffee in the morning if I worked at it, but I still find the ribbon interface to be incredibly intuitive, if a bit of a vertical hog on the Q1’s little UMPC screen.)

 At CES TabletKiosk introduced a new line of Tablet PCs with the Sahara i412T, i420T, and i440D.  And I think they’re some of the best slates ever, especially the i440D.  This is the one I saw last year at the TabletKiosk Demo Days but couldn’t talk about.

All three models feature a slick-looking white chassie with rounded corners and eight buttons on the front.  They also have a biometric finger print reader and a 12.1″ XGA (1024×768) resolution screen with wide angle viewing.  the i412T and i420T use a touch screen rather than an active digitizer which is rare for tablets, but common for the Sahara line.  The i440D features both the touch screen and the active digitizer.  You switch between them with a switch on the side of the unit.  I asked why they didn’t use an automatic switching mechanism and the answer I got was that this way saved them a lot of money on the cost of the unit, which helps keep the price low.  The two 440 models have a Core Duo processor and all of the support up to 2GB of RAM and a 160 GB hard drive.  They also have WiFi and Bluetooth, but no 3G cellular.

Another interesting feature, and unique to the Saharas as far as I know, is that you can get them with Windows Vista, Windows XP, or Linux pre-installed.  It’s nice to have that choice, although personally I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment before choosing Vista.  And they’ll run Aero Glass very nicely.

I’ve been thinking for a while now that my next tablet would be a slate and as of right now, my choice would be the i440T from TabletKiosk.  It is a gorgeous, very full-featured tablet and the only thing I’d change would be to up the screen resolution to something higher than XGA.  I really hope I can get my hands on one of these sometime soon.

Link to TabletKiosk - Tablet PCs, Ultra-Mobile PCs and Custom Computing Solutions

Sorry guys but the only news I have today is about myself

I just released today the final version of Inkoogle. It now includes a lot more search engines!

Inkoogle is a Universal Web Searching tool that supports Ink. It helps Tablet PC and UMPC Owners to search in all Google different types of search engines, including books, froogle, images, maps, video, etc. But that’s not all, you can search also in Wikipedia using the different languages available at this site, you use the Amazon Search Engine and you can use Pricegraber.com Search Engine for the different countries (languages) available on this site. This is why I call it Universal Web Searching Tool.

This tool is a freeware. You don’t pay nothing for it. But it includes my affiliated ID in some of these searches. This does not cost you anything also and it does not interfere in any way with your searches. It just help me to pay my bills so I can continue helping you and others with what I do in this and other sites.
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Before you read this, I know that I have left off some piece of tablet software that you dearly love. But for people looking to understand the basics of Tablet PC software, these apps will open enough doors that they will find whatever I left off. Feel free to tell me what I missed in the comments. (With attitude please!)

Ink Enabled - Software that allows you to interact directly in that program using ink instead of using middleman software like the TIP. See Below.

TIP - Tablet Input Panel. This is a small piece of tablet PC software that harnesses the full power of modern computing hardware, not to solve world hunger, but to convert the chicken scratch handwriting that you have leftover from being a lazy six year old into something that can be understood by a software application that is too dumb to simply let you use ink directly. But I’m not bitter.

Floating TIP - Yeah, it was like the TIP dude, but floating. Out there in the clouds. Above your cursor. Don’t you see it officer? Uh, they’re clove cigarettes. Yeah. You don’t see the floating tip man? Did you install it on your UMPC? It’s not there by default on a UMPC, only on a tablet. You have to like, install it separately dude.

Experience Pack/Education Pack/Touch Pack - In the early days of Tablet PC’s, software traveled in packs for safety. A pack provided some protection from the ravages of hungry software reviewers. An application was harsh and cold and deserved a severe review. Packs were warm and fuzzy collections of little apps, like bunnies. Easy to download and take home to your tablet named Sammy or Binky. The Touch Pack continued this tradition on the UMPC. It’s older siblings, the Experience and Education Packs are now in the wild for everyone to enjoy. But the Touch Pack is still only easily available on a UMPC.

Line Rider - Like Meth for a Tablet PC. Only better. All those other schmucks have to use a mouse to draw lines in this wildly addictive game. You get to use a PEN to DRAW. Why didn’t anyone think of this sooner!

OneNote 2007 - See OneNote 2003. See also Positive Effects of Steroid Use. OneNote 2007 is familiar enough that you won’t get lost and improved enough that you won’t go back. Just read some of the blogs by people smarter than me in the tablet space and you’ll see more than you ever wanted to know about how to use OneNote.

TEO 3.0 - Tablet Enhancements for Outlook. ”Yes that’s right dispatch, it’s Outlook alright. But it’s bigger somehow, and badder. Oh my god, it’s got a pen! Send backup!”  TEO turns Outlook into Rambo. Please buy this software. My wife will be mad if I make Josh Einstein move in with me and pay his bills so he can continue developing TEO. His wife will be mad too.

PDF Annotator - What Adobe Acrobat wishes it could be, on it’s best day, with a pen.

Windows Journal - OneNote, before it grew up. Still very nice, like playing Atari Flashback even though you own an XBox 360.

URotate - If you have a Q1(and I believe some other UMPC’s), this is like a Merry Go Round for your screen. Dump the default screen rotation and use this. Let the Q1 have a little fun!

(Note: Upon rereading this, I’ve found a surprising number of drug references. Perhaps that’s because I find the stupidity of drug use to be incredibly sad and use humor to poke fun at that stupidity. Perhaps its because Tablet PC’s are extremely addicting. Unfortunately, all of you will probably understand these references too.)

Apparently, I am unable to write a short post, deal with it. Let the long list of things I left off begin.