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 you want a UMPC to act as your all-in-one uber-remote, you just might be in luck.

S1Digital LLC and Autonomic Controls’ have partnered to provide custom integrators with two-way, IP based control of S1Digital Media Centers. The companies will also be demonstrating a UMPC interface to S1Digital’s Media Centers in the Intel booth at CEDIA this September. After the show, installers and customers can see a demonstration of the touch panel interface at S1Digital’s new showroom in New York City.

You can read the full press release and see a pretty picture here.

A short, but sweet video review of the Sony UX180P from just a regular guy who just clearly loves gadgets. It’s nice commentary, combined with slightly blurry video.

That sweet looking psuedo-UMPC known as the Vegas has been given a bit of a test drive. In it’s first hand-on, the little Vega seems to impress the folks over at GadgetKorea.

One of the cooler statements in the review:

Now, this Lion Digital [the manufacturer] has worked together with AMD to make this reality where it’s arch rival Samsung & Sony did it together with Intel, but failed in the end to make a playable 3D gaming consoles out of UMPCs. Realistic lips, faces, blood circulation simulation was just amazing - really, we were shocked by this level of detail and performance from a tiny gadget compared to a real Desktop PC - even the average laptop wouldn’t able to do this!

This looks to be both a great gaming platform and full-fledged windows XP platform.

[Head nod to UMPCsite]

I try not to just post the same old news that you’re reading on other sites, but I know that most of you depend solely on Ultranauts for your mobile computing news (plus your horosocopes and TV listings). Here’s a brief round-up of news that we didn’t cover directly, but is interesting:

1. Sony Mylo announced via onlyUMPC
2. New Tablet Kisok Manuals available via UMPCbuzz
3. New Vega pseudo-UMPC uncloacked via Gizmodo
4. New TabletKisok periphreals via TabletKiosk

Send in your news now and we’ll add it to the list!

It’s a bit dark, but the video above is more evidence that the UMPC is a viable gaming platform. Plus, I just love those Tron light-cycles!

I imagine that most early adopters of the platform are not gamers, but I also imagine that many gamers are interested in the platform’s capabilities and are eager for some benchmarks, reviews and opinions. This makes for another gap and another catch-22 in the UMPCs marketing. It’s an opportunity that’s screaming to be addressed.

To me, the UMPC seems to have great potential for gaming. So much so, that I think I’ll create a UMPC gaming catagory! Gamers, the Ultranauts love you!

If the mobile computing world has a Frankenstein’s monster, the Asus D-Plus could be it.

Accordiing to Mobile Magazine:

It’s not exactly a laptop, and it’s so much more than a UMPC. Instead, the ASUS D-Plus series can be better thought of as a fully portable desktop computer, complete with all the stuff you’d expect at your home workstation… except you can fold it up and take it with you.

It also appears to just be a design proto-type. For now, anyway. It is nice to see that folks are pushing the envelope… even if they tear a giant hole in it in the process.

It’s not much, but I did get some quasi-new information on the alledgedly upcoming Dell UMPC over the weekend. Here’s the cryptic note:

1. Expect sooner than in an “18 month” window
2. It is NOT called an Axim Evolution. The AE is in no way associated with the Dell UMPC.

Well, I’d like some pics of the darn thing, but I’ll bet that we’re happy with whatever breadcrumbs we can get. The “18 month window” comment is completely useless, but I personally think the Axim Evolution comment is interesting. Does that mean this was just a development name for the device, never intended for a retail brand name? Or is there an actual “AE” device and it is something else, non-UMPC realted?

Anyone from Dell care to comment?

[Thanks AustinBird]