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…)

Have you been praying for Halo to make it’s debut on the UMPC? Do you just watch Microsoft’s UMPC teaser video over and over, dreaming of the day when you’ll get your hands on a portable version of Master Chief and Cortana? We’ll if your’re one of those people, you can keep waiting!

Halo isn’t coming to the UMPC anytime soon. But what you can have is Hangman. I don’t think even Halo could match the action, drama and suspense evident in the clip above.

[Thanks citanic]

Remember that early, leaked video of the UMPC (way back when this was all known as the top-secret Origami Project)? We’ll if you’re an old-timer like me, then you’ll probably also remember that the video promised a gaming future where Halo was made portable (and possible) on the UMPC. It was the promise of that video that initially got me excited about the UMPC. Halo on-the-go? I’m so there.

We’ll marketing hype and reality don’t usually make good bedfellows. Apparently Halo will not be coming to the UMPC anytime soon. But, Microsoft is showing us the silver-lining: as of today, a Whack-a-Mole clone called Hammer Heads is the official debut game for the UMPC platform. Yawn!

“It’s great to have PopCap onboard developing innovative titles for the new Ultra-Mobile PC category,” said Otto Berkes, General Manager of the Ultra-Mobile PC group at Microsoft Corp. “The portability of UMPCs makes them a fantastic casual gaming platform. Add in the unique touch screen interface, and you have a whole new level of interactivity that creates some exciting possibilities for gamers.”

Did you catch it? “Casual gaming platform.” Of course, after seeing the specs and the battery life reports, we all knew that “casual” was the best we could hope for in the near-term. But, still, the promise of that Halo video gave me just a hint of hope that something was coming.

Hit popcap.com soon for more information on Hammer Heads