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…)

Frank Garcia (ctitanic) latched on to the hope of HID drivers for the Samsung Q1 months ago. His zealotry frightened me a little (it’s been sort of like the movie Rudy) but in the end he seems to have won. Frank has Q1 HID drivers available for download. The initial instructions are for Vista but it appears that it will work for XP as well.

Frank, I don’t know if you sacrificed a goat at midnight while sticking voodoo pins in a Tablet PC guy or if someone is now nursing sore kneecaps but I for one am grateful. My Q1 is in desperate need of a rebuild and this makes me think I’ll rebuild it with Vista.

HID HID Hooray! (That was over the top wasn’t it? I’ll go back to my budget reforecasting now.)

Apple’s Mac vs. PC commercials are killing me. I admit, they are very funny. The laughter offsets the increase in my blood pressure. It’s the double standard that bothers me. As Kevin Tofel’s experience shows, cryptic error messages aren’t unique to the PC and that’s what Apple lampoons in their latest episode. Despite the happy go hippie image often portrayed by Apple, they would gladly be as evil as MS if they had won the OS war.

My second gripe is that Microsoft hasn’t bothered to respond. I think the commercials are hurting them. Microsoft is at it’s best in a face to face showdown. IE vs. Netscape. Excel vs. Lotus. Word vs. WordPerfect. Bob vs… well you get the picture.

Microsoft should be showcasing their strengths in places where the Mac doesn’t compete. The Tablet PC, the UMPC, the Media Center PC. MS should pick a “style” of commercial and partner with HP, Samsung, Lenovo, etc. for a series of ads. Really, this is easy and both Samsung and HP are doing some cool commercials now days. How about one featuring Hugo Ortega? God knows he’s got enough enthusiasm to take on Apple.

Despite it’s maturity, the Tablet PC continues to get people’s attention when you pull out the pen. It’s still cool. My Samsung Q1 still makes Mac people jealous when they see it. You can feel their insecurity. If I hear “Apple is coming out with a Tablet PC next year” from another Mac person they’re going to have to surgically remove my Q1 from their rear. It’s a good thing for them that it’s small.

I also can’t tell you how excited people get when I tell them I have the episode of Idol/24/Desperate Housewives that they missed recorded on my Media Center PC. You want a DVD so you can catch up? No problem. You’re kid is on TV? Sure I’ll record it and send you a WMV file.

The Apple vs. PC Tablet PC spoof on YouTube is still one of my favorites. It showcases the kind of creativity I’d love to see from MS. So how about it Microsoft? Are you ready to give Apple a sMac down with the UMPC?

Finally a beta driver that adds HID support to Q1s that have been upgraded to Vista has been “unofficially” released. The importance of HID Support can be only described by one who has experienced both sides. Your handwriting looks just indescribably better. But it’s not just that. With HID support your UMPC is recognized as a Tablet PC and just because of that you will get all the functionality that Vista has included for Tablet PC Devices such has automatically learning from your handwriting, flicks, full mouse functionality, etc.

You can download this beta driver here.

A short year ago, we though a UMPC had a 7″ screen, XP Tablet Edition, a touchscreen, the MS touchpack and 800 x 480 native resolution. (So the Sony UX and original OQO didn’t technically count)

Then Vista came out and the Sony UX (5″ screen) and the OQO (no touchscreen, active digitizer only) became UMPC’s. Microsoft marketing declared it so.

By that measure the Fujitsu P1610 and Kohjisha SA1F00 should be UMPC’s.

Based on that, the only distinguishing difference between a Tablet PC and UMPC was screen size. Every other factor had been replicated in either a Tablet PC (Lenovo with a touchscreen) or a UMPC (OQO with active digitizer, screen sizes all over the map). You could get just about every feature in one device or another. For example, screen size is about the only thing that keeps the Motion LS800 from being called a UMPC.

Now the Engadget folks have screwed things up by putting the Fujitsu P1610 and  Kohjisha SA1F00 on their list of nominees for 2006 Tablet PC of the Year award, I don’t know what’s a tablet and what’s a UMPC anymore. The rest of the UMPC’s have ended up with the mobile devices. Huh?

I just don’t see buyers trying to decide between a Fujitsu P1610 and a monster Gateway tablet. The decision is more likely to be between a P1610 and an Asus R2H or Samsung Q1P with the core question being “do I really need a keyboard?”.

More importantly, do we really need a separate UMPC category anymore or do we simply need to go back to arguing about slate vs. convertible like we used to? When it comes to tablets and UMPC’s does size matter or is it about what you do with what you have?

I’m a CPA but I don’t primarily do tax work. I can’t get out of it completely, though.  Dad’s has that whole, “Why did I pay for college for you if I can’t get my taxes done for free?” thing going on. So I do tax work for about 8 or 9 people at tax time. 

On Easter Sunday after church, we headed to the beach but I still had tax work to do. Beach or taxes, beach or taxes. Yeah right. So I grabbed the Q1 and did an hours worth of tax returns on the way to the beach (no, I wasn’t driving). 

I can safely report that mainstream tax software works fine on a UMPC. There is of course no native pen support but if more people will do their taxes on a Tablet PC or UMPC it will come eventually. (Now that you get the play on words  in the title, I apologize.)

Since today’s tax software is mostly answering questions and hitting next a lot, the pen actually works pretty well and can take some of the drudgery out of the work.  Anything that makes taxes interesting is valuable.

Let’s face it, does it sound better to be trapped in that back bedroom with an old desktop slaving through your taxes or arriving at the beach knowing you finished your taxes on the way with your handy UMPC?

Even you can do that math. Sadly, you can’t deduct the cost of your shiny new UMPC as “Tax Preparation Fees” but don’t let that stop you. Sticking it to the IRS takes on a whole new meaning when you use a tablet and a pen.

I got the Ram suction cup mount for the Q1 a little over a week ago and I have to say that I’m impressed. Despite being hard to buy, it was dead simple to assemble. (Even though there is a “kit” part number you have to buy each of the five parts separately and you have to buy from a dealer, many of which only take phone orders. GPS City was great for online ordering and had all the parts.)

At the risk of being sued by trained monkeys, a trained monkey with a Phillips screwdriver could put this together. It’s really hard to mess up.

Every part is high quality and much better in person than the photos that appear on the website. The suction cup is not a 90’s “Baby on board” sign holder kind of thing. It’s more like the old super glue commercials where they held a truck above a guy’s head. This something you could play spider man stuck to building holding Kirsten Dunst with. (Hey, I fit Kirsten Dunst into a UMPC post. That should generate some traffic!)

Seriously, this is an industrial strength suction cup with a lock and release lever to activate/deactivate the suction connection. No peeling at this with your fingertips.

The actually Q1 cradle is very sturdy. It’s not going to break taking the Q1 in and out. I was so impressed I did something foolish. I stuck the Ram mount to a tile in our kitchen, inserted Q1 and left it over night. If it had fallen, I would be writing a UMPC eulogy. It didn’t wiggle.

The addition of the Ram mount, restores  the Q1 as the primary media machine for me. (The Samsung Blackjack was taking over.) It also highlights one of the differences between slate style and convertible UMPC’s. I can’t see a Ram mount like this for a convertible like the Fujitsu P1610.  You may be able to use a small laptop mount but it wouldn’t be the same.