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…)

It’s certainly not the the most appealing marketing attempt that we’ve ever seen, but the form factor sure does grab our attention. Let’s hope that the upcoming Eee is more proof that good things come in small packages (and it can run XP!). We’ll be watching this one closely.

All the juicy details can be found in the Press Release.

Rob Bushway is currently demoing the OQO Model 2 while on vacation. The GottaBeMobile guys have been passing around the OQO for different opinions. Here’s a tip. Don’t be in line after Rob!

As kids we used to joke about spitting on our birthday cake while blowing out the candles so we wouldn’t have to share the cake. Rob did the same thing when he photographed the OQO on an outhouse stall. I doubt the OQO folks want their demo unit back now. Ewe!

Rob did claim that he sanitized the unit afterwards but my first thought when I read “outhouse” was a fly invested hole of an outhouse I remember from a national park in Alaska. You’ll need to scrub the Purell directly on my mind to get rid of that image.

So Rob enjoy the OQO model 2. For the rest of you, be careful buying a used OQO +2 on ebay. It might be Rob’s!

There’s been a lot going around about the perfect PC. Power, Size, Weight, Battery Life. Everything is a compromise. Now I have my I own idea of where PC’s may ultimately end up. The tech isn’t there yet so I’m content to be ahead of my time.

Imagine a PC the size of a Treo or iPod running a full MS operating system like Vista. This CORE has your Hard Drive, radios (WIFI, BT, Cell Phone and High Speed Cell Data) and functions as your phone. The battery lasts at least a full day on a single charge. I lean toward a thumb board but I’m open here.

Remember this is just the CORE. When you need other functions, you slip the core into accessories. For note taking there’s a slate option. Simply lock the core into it’s dock in the back of the slate. The slate has it’s own battery to keep the core charged (remember, the core is going to last a day all by itself so it sips battery) and to power the slate. The slate also has a much bigger screen and comes in various sizes to accommodate both the UMPC and “never big enough” crowds. Importantly, the slate has its own CPU/GPU as a booster for the on board processor. This way you only carry the processing power you can actually use.

 If you like keyboards there’s a convertible option. If you need heavy video editing there’s a desktop dock or laptop option with better CPU/GPU boosters.

In the car, just plug the sucker into the dock. Like Microsoft’s new Surface, drop my little pc on the Surface and drag away.

The point is to have a single, pocketable device with minimal tradeoffs and the greatest flexibility. Nobody can do video rendering on a Treo size screen. But you can carry videos with you and do rendering when you have a peripheral that provides a bigger screen and beefier CPU/GPU. Notice “Peripheral”, not whole new device.

Finally, a device like this should increase the time to obsolescence since you only buy an accessory, not a full device, every time you need a different form factor.  

I’ve had this idea rattling around in my head for years. I suspect I’m not the only one and I still expect that we will ultimately get there. I’m not seeing many people suggest this though. I think the tech just isn’t there yet. The Foleo has a few elements with its strong ties to the Treo. the Everun approaches with it’s form factor, full OS and thumb keyboard but I think we are still years away from something like my perfect pc.