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…)

Fellow Ultranauts, this site is taking a well-deserved Memorial Day vacation. In fact, we’re taking a week! We’ll be on the beach, drinking frosty, fruity adult beverages and dreaming of UMPCs.

Of course, we’ll also be thinking about you. While we’re away, pre-preparing our skin for cancerous lesions, please take the opportunity to visit some of the other great UMPC and TabletPC site out there. A great place to start is at the Quick Links list at right of this page.

Have a great Memorial Day/Week!

That Sony UMPC review that we’ve been waiting for has been posted up over at Digital World Tokyo. It contains some nice commentary and some nice shots of the unit in action. Here’s a preview:

Finally, the weight of the UX50 is likely to split opinion down the middle. I found it too heavy to sway me from my 900g Toshiba laptop. Why save just 400g but sacrifice a proper keyboard, decent screen and great battery life? Both the UX50 and a laptop need to be carried in a bag anyway, as the Sony PC clearly isn’t pocketable, so where’s the need?

Well, I don’t no if I need it. But, I sure do want it. Read the full review here.

Ok, maybe furious isn’t the exact word they used. But they did use and infer the word “disappointed” (and were pretty sure that’s a synonym for furious as my wife often uses them in the same sentence). In an article today from Cnet News.com, the big M talks about the potential for Vista-centric UMPCs. But far more interesting than the obvious, were the comments on UMPC pricing:

While Microsoft was under no illusions that it could hit its long-term $500 price goal, the company said Tuesday it was not happy with how expensive the first devices turned out to be. “We were (disappointed),” said Mika Krammer, a director in Microsoft’s Windows product marketing unit. “We would have liked to have seen a lower price point.”

Microsoft goes onto say that they really don’t have anything to do with final pricing. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Here’s a thought… charge less for the operating system. Or charge nothing at all to stoke the initial market. Are you licensing the spec? Oh, so much I want to know!

Read the full article and Cnet News.com.

The Sony VAIO UX50 is the one alternative to the UMPC that I think makes a degree of sense (based on specs and form factor, anyway). It could give the UMPC a run for its money if its price comes down by a few hundred dollars. I’ve been waiting for some sort of hands-on with this device and it looks like something will be hitting soon:

So far, results have been pretty mixed but we’ll be publishing a full review shortly, which we hope will answer a few of the hundreds of calls we’ve had for a complete rundown of Sony’s UMPC killer.

Keep your eyes on Digital World Tokyo for the full review soon.

Flash memory mercilessly murdered the lowly floppy disk… and now it’s turned it’s heart of evil to doing in the Hard Disk as well.

Indeed, “flash” memory prices and memory technology have come to the point where it is now possible for the flash drives to replace HDDs in some situations. The benefits? Lower power drain. Less volitale technology. Cool factor. The drawbacks? Capacity still can’t compete with old-school tech. And, the big one, price! The flash drive modules are pretty darn pricey.

Our very good friends over at engadget are carrying word of the Q1’s future:

Slapping that pup into the Q1 UMPC for any reason other than the rights to another “World’s First [insert product category]” placard to prop-up at trade-shows is just, well, overkill.

We agree. But, we also agree with engadget that this is the future of memory storage and of the UMPC. Read their full article here.

Rob has caused me to go a bit YouTube crazy over the past couple of weeks, but I’ve enjoyed his UMPC sermons immensely. The guy also has a heck of a lot of charisma. This is half-way decent UMPC marketing! Whoever is behind this (MS, Intel, Via, etc), good work. Coincidentally, I’m also available for multi-part UMPC commentary. Charisma not included.

It’s hard to believe it’s over now though, that this is the final installment. Who can forget Rob’s predictions about UMPCs merging with human DNA, Vger style? Or his respect for the UMPC taking the road less traveled? And, of course, Rob’s at his best when talking about giant-mechanized UMPCs with global armageddon as their only goal.

God bless you, Rob. You’ll be missed.

We’ve certainly seen our fair share of UMPC reviews over the past couple of weeks. Most of them have been quick impression based affairs that really don’t go to far beyond the basic aesthetics and battery life of the new platform.

That’s why I was so excited to see Lisa Gade’s Q1 review over at MobileTechReview. It is flat out fantastic. From opening the box to benchmarks to playing games to size comparisons with a Pepsi can, Lisa leaves no stone unturned.

There literally is pretty much nothing like it! it’s gorgeous, it’s cool and it functions well in a variety of rolls, from ultra-portable notebook to media player to digital note taker (and more). The hardware is of impeccable quality other than the integrated stand and the machine is powerful enough to replace a basic notebook. Is it worth the price?

You’ll have to read the full review to get the answer! Nice job, Lisa!