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…)

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s sensationlist headlines. You won’t find any of those at Ultranauts.com. However, the folks at Cnet don’t seem to share our high journalistic standards and have unleashed a new article entitled Apple Newton vs. Samsung Q1 UMPC: A Steel-cage Deathmatch! (ok, I added that last part).

The article is both clever and funny and has been fully covered elsewhere on the Interweb. I’ll spare your keen intellect any further rehashing. While I wish I had thought of this idea myself, I must say that the joke could have been taken further. Much further. Why limit the fight to just the Newton? There are dozens of other portable computing contenders ready to come out of retirement to do battle with the might UMPC platform. Here are my top 3:

1. UMPC versus the HP Palmtop 200LX
2. UMPC versus the Compaq Portable
3. UMPC versus the TI SAS

Any others that should be added?

Ok, everyone has seen the sneak-peek of the alledgedly upcoming, but unannounced UMPC. Is it a leak? Is it viral marketing? Is it even real? I don’t know. If you haven’t seen it, go here now.

But I will tell you this. I must have it! Forget the Sony UX180P. Forget the Asus R2H. For me, this is the UMPC I must get. I don’t need to see the front. I don’t need to see the specs. I just need this device. And here’s why…

I’m a gadget guy. And I’m married. Those two things don’t mix. Ever. But my wife tolerates it as long as I keep all my stuff confined to my office in the house and as long as I make sure that all of my equipment is as color coordinated as possible (or kept in a drawer or closet). I kid you not! My printer has to be the same color as my monitor. And my monitor the same color as my computer. That’s why my iPod is black… so that when it’s docked, it matches everything else.

So all of my stuff is black, with silver accents. Just like that mystery picture of the new UMPC. In fact, that new device matches the color scheme and aesthetic of my Dell computer and Dell monitor perfectly and exactly. Black and silver accents and all! How is that for luck! So, there you have it. I need that new unnamed UMPC to match my Dell rig and keep my wife happy. Hmmmm.

[UPDATE: As had been speculated, the mystery UMPC is simply a Founder UMPC. And it still matches my set-up perfectly!]

I’m not kidding, this video is completely worthless. It’s just more of booth-vixen, Nora, showing off CarbonCloud on a UMPC. The first video proved popular, so here’s the encore. I’m sure Nora is proud.

And, seriously, what the heck is this CarbonCloud UMPC application? Here’s a bit I found on it from deep within the Interweb:

The foundation of the demo was CarbonCloud - a P2P framework to enable connections directly between users’ computers so they can instantly share location content in a safe and secure environment. With CarbonCloud you can create your own neighborhood, then instantly share your notes, digital photos and maps with others through your own distributed network.

Ok, I still don’t get it. Maybe you can decipher the CarbonCloud code. If you do, let us know what the heck it really is in the comments below.

Why do you love Ultranauts? Because we read between-the-lines to find the stuff that the more talented, better looking mobile computing reporters often miss while they’re busy accepting awards and gazing longingly into the mirror. For instance, take this interview with AMD EVP and CMO, Henri Richard, discussing the upcoming AMD-ATI mega-merger.

At first, it’s just paragraphs and paragraphs of merger justification, and then this:

Q: So what exactly is it that you hope to gain from ATI, in term of handsets?

A: Well, if you think about the evolution of the handset market, there’s an increasing body of evidence that new products, like the UMPC and portable devices that are neither a small notebook nor a smartphone, seem to be one of the hot topics of conversation these days, particularly here in Taiwan, and I think that for us, re-establishing a very strong partnership, through this ATI acquisition, with companies such as Nokia or Motorola, is an interesting element. If you start to think about the future of mobile computing, there’s now the possibility that some of those key industry market makers might decide to enter that space.

Followed by this:

Q: How about systems-on-chip, as such, which would imply not only a processor and graphics capability but also memory, and so on.

A: Again there, we’re going to go back to the UMPC type of space. This is a very interesting space. With the 50×15 initiative, we’re very very close to all those new types of devices that require a system-on-chip capability, whether they’re for the ultra-mobility space, whether they’re for the ultra-low-cost space, and there again we believe that by having the complete set of tools and building blocks, we’ll be able to bring a level of innovation at the complete system level that we couldn’t when we were just AMD as a CPU company. It’s too early for me to disclose anything. We’ve got to go and do some hard work now, but certainly we know there are a lot of great opportunities to take some of the great technology that ATI develops for markets that are adjacent to the PC market and see if by combining some of those technologies with what we know about the PC market, we can create a new paradigm or a new level of performance at power and cost envelopes that have not been achieved so far.

I have no idea what that guy just said. But it sounds like a potential positive for some fragment of the UMPC market. Frankly, I never thought that the AMD-ATI merger could benefit our favorite ultra mobile platform. But just the multiple mentions of the UMPC in this C-level interview and as a part major financial merger is excellent news!

You can read the full interview via Digitimes.

Samsung is apparently not abandoning the UMPC market anytime soon, despite a luke-warm consumer response to the platform and to their intiaial foray into the market with the Q1. A new article over at eWeek has a wealth of insightful and, dare I say, shocking information concerning Samsung’s UMPC plans.

Some of the more interesting blurbs include:

You can read all the rest of the hot, juicy Samsung gossip here.

iRiver has sort of been a 3rd tier player when it comes to digital media players. But I will give them kudos for two things: their persistence and their desire to differnetiate from the crowd.

Both of those traits appear to be evident in recent rumors concerning their product roadmap. Specifically, the so-called J10 has the potential to be a new entrant into the expanding UMPC world.

Even more interesting than the so-called N20 is a product being referred to as the J10, which could be anything from a Windows Mobile-powered PDA to a UMPC running the full version of XP Tablet Edition, and which is rumored to sport both a DMB tuner and of course the WiBro functionality that iRiver has so much love for.

I would welcome an iRiver UMPC with open-arms. Undoubtedly they would bring both a new twist and a new aesthetic to the platform. Plus, their usual competitive pricing structure couldn’t hurt either. You can read more and see some potential product sketches via our adopted big-brother, engadget.

Personal hero, Hugo Ortega, attends a private banking tech expo and explores the gadgets and technology that make managing your money possible. Included in this round-up is the glue that holds the world’s economy together, the UMPC!

We love ya, Hugo. Especially your hair.