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…)

Laptops for gaming are gaining popularity because, despite their cost and weight, they are still portable, and allow gamers to congregate to compete. Hardware performance improves constantly as well, so being tied to a desk is no longer required for serious gamers. 

You could even make the case that gaming is driving some of the technology such as dual core processors and video power.  New features on laptops for gaming include those as well as larger hard drives, increased memory, and batteries with longer life.  Now you can even add a mobile broadband card and log in from just about any location in the U.S.

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As promised, Ultranauts.com is expanding. You demanded it, you got it. As a result, we will be transitioning to the new Ultranauts.com today. Expect some outages and some tweaking. In the end, this will be a much better website and a much cooler community. And the changes won’t stop with just a new “look-and-feel”… we’ll be adding new features and functionality in the coming days and months. Stay tuned!

One very, very important note: The RSS Feed URL is changing. The new feed is www.ultranauts.com/feed/

Please make the change now.

This is the last post on the “old” Ultranauts.com. Goodbye, green template.. we hardly new ya. If you have any issues with the feed, make sure to visit www.ultranauts.com and resubscribe (or send a note to john@ultranauts.com). We’ll see you on the other side.

We’re expanding!

Are you passionate about mobile technology? Are you a bit of a smart-ass? Do you have a firm grasp of the alphabet? Do you want to be famous? If you answered yes to at least half of one of those questions, then there is more than a 100% chance that you are Ultranauts material.

If you are interested in having fun, getting some great industry exposure and entertaining the tens of dozens of faceless, nameless geeks that read Ultranauts everyday, please send a writing sample in the tone of this site and a short sentence or two about why you’ll be the greatest addition to the Ultranauts team since, well, me!

Send your submissions to john@ultranauts.com. Please have your submissions in by September 26th. Remember though, the early bird usually gets the worm.

Games? Check.
Star Wars? Check.
UMPC? Awesomness!

Microsoft has now made it possible to enjoy the wireless fredom of their official Xbox 360 controller on your UMPC (or any windows PC, really). A new controller skew is on its way that combines 1 wireless Xbox 360 controller and 1 wireless USB dongle.

Designed by the Xbox 360 gaming team, the controller features the following:

• 2.4 GHz wireless technology with up to a 30-foot range

• Adjustable vibration feedback for longer battery life

• Precise thumb sticks

• Two pressure-point triggers

• Eight-way direction pad for enhanced PC gaming

• Integrated headset jack for PC headsets

The new Xbox 360 Wireless Controller for Windows is a superior wireless gaming controller that works with Windows XP-based PCs and the Xbox 360 system to deliver a consistent entertainment experience across Microsoft’s gaming platforms.

Sounds awesome! We can’t wait to play iHangman with this!

That sweet looking psuedo-UMPC known as the Vegas has been given a bit of a test drive. In it’s first hand-on, the little Vega seems to impress the folks over at GadgetKorea.

One of the cooler statements in the review:

Now, this Lion Digital [the manufacturer] has worked together with AMD to make this reality where it’s arch rival Samsung & Sony did it together with Intel, but failed in the end to make a playable 3D gaming consoles out of UMPCs. Realistic lips, faces, blood circulation simulation was just amazing - really, we were shocked by this level of detail and performance from a tiny gadget compared to a real Desktop PC - even the average laptop wouldn’t able to do this!

This looks to be both a great gaming platform and full-fledged windows XP platform.

[Head nod to UMPCsite]

It’s a bit dark, but the video above is more evidence that the UMPC is a viable gaming platform. Plus, I just love those Tron light-cycles!

I imagine that most early adopters of the platform are not gamers, but I also imagine that many gamers are interested in the platform’s capabilities and are eager for some benchmarks, reviews and opinions. This makes for another gap and another catch-22 in the UMPCs marketing. It’s an opportunity that’s screaming to be addressed.

To me, the UMPC seems to have great potential for gaming. So much so, that I think I’ll create a UMPC gaming catagory! Gamers, the Ultranauts love you!