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 considering standing in line for a Steve Jobs creation tonight. No, no the much iHyped iPhone, the little Pixar Disney creation, Ratatoille. (Why doesn’t Pixar put little i’s in front of everything?)

I’ve decided iHate the iPhone.It’s like the classic dumb blonde. The interface is iGorgeous but if you ask it to do something really intelligent, like use 3g, it can’t.  Sadly my Samsung Blackjack leaves me wanting as well with it’s goofy proprietary headphone jack, crippled Java and lack of a bluetooth pan connection to Vista, but 3G rocks!

The bright spot has been the Samsung Q1. Now with 2 gigs of ram I’ve rediscovered the Vista sidebar to my delight. So for the iPhone I’m left with iDon’tCare and I’m off to see iRatatoille.

I brought the Q1 organizer pack and keyboard on vacation with me…and then I broke it. I had the organizer with the keyboard attached in my backpack but the Q1 wasn’t in the organizer. Somehow my backpack got squashed (probably in the way overloaded car). This bent one of the side clips that holds the organizer in. As I was trying to gently bend it back I broke it. I know, I’m a he-man that makes Arnold jealous but what can you do.

Then I see that the right shift button has popped off and the little rubber volcano that sits under the key and makes it springy has disappeared as well. So now I have a partially useable organizer and a partially useable keyboard. I think it may be time for a bluetooth keyboard soon.

Since upgrading my Q1 to Vista I have not been a fan of the Origami Experience app. I find it nice to look at but performance has been terrible. The app has been slow and often goes out into la-la land when I pick a playlist. Sometimes it comes back from la-la land and sometimes it doesn’t. All of this was with 1 gig of RAM in the Q1. Very disappointing.

Well, I’ve upgraded the Q1 to 2 gigs and all is right with the world. The Origami Experience can still be a tad slow but it’s acceptable and I haven’t had any of the weird lockups.

Blame this on Rob Bushway. He started it. We’re on vacation at our family condo in New Smyrna Beach, FL and of course my Q1 went with us. So here’s the Q1:

On the balcony reading an ebook.

Keeping connected with his Blackjack buddy.

Q1 four wheeling!?!

Biking? Yeah you wish!

Chauffeured is more your style.

  GET AWAY FROM THE WATER!!!! Skim boards and boogie boards are OUT!

 Sand Castles are fine.

Just relax. You scared me with that water thing.

In truth, the Q1 has been great. I’ve done about a 1/2 hour of work in 5 days. Just enough to make my life easier when I get back. For now, I’m still on vacation. I’ll have more on the broken parts when I get back.

[Special thanks to the folks at Island Reef for letting the Q1 play with their toys. If you’re in NSB show them some UMPC love and rent a bike or a 4-wheeler on the beach.]

Somebody really needs to run a UMPC photo contest showing UMPC’s on the go. Microsoft? Samsung? Tablet Kiosk?

I have been involved recently in many arguments about performance and battery life and that made me think about myself back in 2006 when the Origami Concept was being constantly attacked by the press and one of the things they were saying was that OEMs were using weak processors in Origamis. And I replied many times back then that UMPCs were companion PCs no designed or thought to replace your main PC at home.

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Hugo Ortega has gotten some grief lately for his choice of the OQO model 2 as his primary machine. The debate has led back to the right device for YOUR needs. Something Hugo said caught my attention:

Don’t forget I own over 17 Tablets (including UMPC)

It made me wonder how many pairs of underwear Hugo owns. Its a simple rule that when your mobile devices outnumber your underwear, something is wrong with your priorities. Of course, your could alway just buy more underwear!

So how about it Hugo, are your priorities straight?

Don’t laugh Matt Miller, you fit in here too!

Installment 3 of Vista on a UMPC - the Good, the Bad and the Utilities.

So we’ve seen the Good and the Bad with Vista on a UMPC. We’re talking UMPCs so there is no Ugly. Now we’re looking at utilities.

- UMPC Scrollbar. This little baby has save my butt a number of times. It lets you scroll the screen when the window can’t normally be resized. As good as Vista is, the team still blew it with some windows not fitting well on the small screen.

- BT On/Off - If your UMPC won’t let you easily turn bluetooth on and off this little utility will make it easy and let you squeeze a little more juice out of your UMPC. Don’t forget, you’re required to turn off your UMPC’s radios on a plane so don’t find yourself poking around in settings to turn off Bluetooth.

- Registry Hacks - Turn off superfetch and paging executive to get rid of that annoying disk thrashing.

The Built ins - The snipping tool, mobility center, Pen flicks, touch pointer and handwriting training make many XP utilities unnecessary. So I’m using fewer utilities and that’s a good thing!

- Q1 Specific Utilities - Make sure you install the HID drivers and MPM if you are using a Q1. HID drivers give true tablet functionality and MPM gives your Q1 a cursor button.