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’m not sure I quite get Microsoft’s commitment to yet another new form factor, the Haiku, so shortly after the debut of the Origami/UMPC. It seems to me that they are thumbing their nose at their device partners for not being able to deliver UMPCs that meet the price/perfomrance ratio that Microsoft had envisioned. And, maybe they have a point… the UMPC is not the mass-market, consumer-class device that MS was marketing during the launch of the platform. At least not yet anyway.

So, the UMPC crashes and burns. But apparently Bill Gates can rebuild him. Stronger. Smaller. Cheaper. Enter the Haiku.

Which begs the question… do you dive into the UMPC world now? Wait for Haiku? Wait for the UMPC to evolve? What? Give us your answer in the new poll.

World of Warcraft on an ultra portable device seems to be a Holy Grail of those gamers that live, breath and sleep the game. I was once addicted to it myself, but thanks to an intervention staged by my wife, I am no longer a slave to the game. It appears that WoW addicts are one-step closer to being able to easily take the game with them wherever they go.

Maybe Microsoft really was furious about how the manufacturers were handling the roll-out of the UMPC. Reports are now coming out that Microsoft is accelerating development on a new class of Ultra Mobile PC, dubbed the Haiku (expect tons of new sites with names like Haikuportal, Haikubuzz and Hakiunauts to pop up at any minute!).

According to an article over at Infoworld.com, “The Haiku device showed off at the Via Technology Forum was basically a display screen about the size of a paperback book. The idea is to use screen input methods to work the device, which would include a version of Microsoft’s OS for Tablet PCs.”

Boiling down the differences between Haiku and the the current UMPC, the Haiku will have a smaller display (about 5 inches), and a longer battery life (8 to 10 hours). It will still run full Microsoft OSs and include the TabletPC extensions.

Don’t expect the new device anytime soon… the Haiku looks to be at least 2 to 3 years out. Of course, when it does arrive it will further displace the TabletPC, accelerating its death spiral. Long time Ultranauts should appreciate the joke (though we’re only half-kidding).