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 have said this before at my own blog, but I feel that I need to say it again, nobody can compete with Linda A. Epstein in making any UMPC or TabletPC look good. You don’t believe me? Check out this picture and others posted in her first look of a Lenovo new ThinkPad X60.

Texas is about to lose its designation as the UMPC-state. Only Texas Best Buy stores carried the Samsung Q1 (and only one other chain, Fry’s, carried the unit domestically). All of that is about to change:

“The company signed the UMPC supply contract with Best Buy of US that expands supply to 240 all Best Buy stores in US from current 20 Best Buy stores and completed display in the whole 40 Price stores and 56 CompuUSA stores. Samsung has built its foundation to attack the US market by supply of single product of UMPC to major discount stores in US.”

This only bodes well for the UMPC form factor overall. Of the three obstacles facing the UMPC (distribution, price and battery life), one of them seems to finally be coming off the table.

[Via ETNews]

A few weeks ago I was writing about Samsung Q1 and I was complaining about how bad the handwriting looks in this device. Being used to how it looks in a TabletKiosk eo v7110 I was expecting the same quality so I was in shock to see how different it was in this new to me device. I also was surprised to see that nobody before ever mentioned this issue that to me is a major one and responsible for how some TabletPC features do not work in Q1 in the way they are supposed.

Why the handwriting in Q1 looks that bad? Right after my comment I got the answer: This issue, “crappy looking handwriting”, is due the touch drivers/bios. q1 doesn’t have tablet os HID drivers but uses “normal” touch drivers.

I know what some Q1 owners may be thinking now - we can live with that - but that’s not all. According to one of the Origami Team member “because the Samsung Q1 doesn’t have some required firmware for HID digitizers you don’t get the floating TIP, Touch Pointer, etc.”

There are a few workarounds that Q1 owners have found to live with these issues but for me that’s not enough. From where I’m from people say that “a Baby won’t eat if he does not cry” so I’m asking Samsung: when are you thinking to fix this issue? What do you think? Do you think that it’s users’ responsibility to go around looking for solutions to what you have left unfinished? Where are the HID Drivers for Q1?

We’ve known for sometime that additional UMPCs that met the “official” Microsoft UMPC spec were on the way. I’ve seen at least one of them (it sure is pretty!). According to our good friends at Gottabemobile, Microsoft has confirmed that at least 6 more kick-ass UMPCs are on the way:

One of the good pieces of information to come out of the Mobile Connections conference was from Todd Lanstad, who works on the UMPC team at Microsoft. According to Todd, Microsoft is anticipating 6 - 10 additional Ultra-Mobile PC manufacturers to announce their UMPCs during the CES timeframe, which is held from January 8 - 11 in Las Vegas.

I had expected at least a couple of the announcements to hit before CES, but this platform is definitely on a “slow simmer” rather than a “rapid boil,” so we take the delays in stride. The bottom line is that Rev.2 of the UMPC world is on the way.

The world’s scariest source of technology info and the world’s scariest editor have just published a wonderfully un-useful “Scariest tech of 2006″ round-up. We’ll cut straight to the chase with their summary of the UMPC:

“These are truly scary little Windows PCs, not small enough to fit in a pocket, not big enough to do useful work, doomed to wander in computing limbo forever. These UMPCs might be ideal for Hobbits, but not for humans.”

The UMPC is joined by other “frightening,” “horrible,” and “doomed” technologies such as X-Men: The Official Game and Stay Alive, a horror movie. And, of course, the Nintendo Wii made the list based on its “name alone.” I’m not sure how the first two of those are considered actual “technology,” but this article wins the coveted Ultranauts award for “Scariest journalisim of 2006.” Congrats to Fortune Magazine and senior editor, Peter Lewis!

[Hat tip to pocketables]

To celebrate the relaunch of Ultranauts.com, we thought it would be fun to revisit just a few of our favorite (and most controverstial) UMPC posts.

1. You’re a total noob, but not after reading this
2. We predict the future…
3. When TabletPC bloggers attack!
4. Our first hard-hitting interview
5. About that Dell UMPC…

Do you have a favorite post to add to the list? (It doesn’t have to be from Ultranauts.com).

Sharp-eyed Ultranaut’s reader, Kevin, has been shopping for an Asus R2H and stumbled upon this very, very interesting tidbit at one of the etailers of the new device:

Important Note: US model will ship with the “Optional - Double Capacity” 6860mAh 48W/hr Polymer Battery
instead of the slightly lighter and shorter lasting 3430mAh 24W/hr that is “Standard” around the world.

If this is true of all US-bound R2Hs, then this is great news. We’re working to get confirmation. Can anyone else confirm if this is a territory-wide deal or just specific to some resellers? Check it out via Proportable.