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…)

Amazon launched an MP3 download service today. That’s right, MP3 as in no DRM. As in no iTunes store required. Oh and there’s no extra fee to take out the DRM. It looks like tracks are $0.99 each.

Amazon has now fired a shot across Apple’s bow. If Amazon Unbox wasn’t enough warning, Amazon is now going after Apple’s digital core.

Want proof? The free download to test your Amazon MP3 downloader is Energy by The Apples In Stereo. Does anyone really believe that this is a coincidence?

The beauty for me is that I don’t have to use the pig known as iTunes. I love the player agnostic part of this. This is a nice feature for my windows centric setup.

As for video I’ve had really good results viewing new pilots on Amazon Unbox. The process has worked well on both my UMPC and my media center TV. A 10′ interface for the TV would be nice but the UMPC was just fine.

Now I can stuff my UMPC and Smartphone with media. who needs to get work done!

I’m an edge user of mobile devices. I use feature the average user doesn’t know exists. I try to keep that in mind when looking at new devices but I’m still astounded at manufacturers who throw in a half implemented feature. While playing with my mom’s new iPhone, I got a bit of the techno lust. It’s a beautiful gadget and much of it is really intuitive. So I started thinking about whether I could live with the limitations (no 3g, no tethering, etc.). So I took her phone and tried stuff. Stuff that my Blackjack does well and stuff that it does poorly but acceptably, to see how the iPhone compares.

I learned that despite it’s rounded corners, the iPhone still has some rough edges. There’s an iPhone bug when used with Microsoft’s address book. The office phone number refused to sync. I know how many folks use MS address book? Well, my mom for one, she’s moving from paper and Outlooks seems like overkill.

No native Bluetooth support for music. Bluetooth headsets work great for the phone functions but you can’t listen to music with either a mono or a stereo headset. (I tried both). There’s a workaround, but the music keeps playing through the phone’s speaker so why bother. Also there are reports that iPod add-ons like iMuffs will work but should we really have to pay extra for stereo Bluetooth?

Yes I’m picking on Apple a little bit but EVERY phone manufacturer seems to have some feature that is poorly implemented. “Converged Device” doesn’t mean shove it all in the same case and don’t worry if things don’t work together. I’m still not sure why this so hard. Ask a few of us what we would like to see in a device. For example, There are tons of requests for mono music playback via Bluetooth. Why? Not quality, accessibility. Sometimes you just want a little unobtrusive background music. But no one seems to get that. Not HP, not Samsung, not Apple.

The best comparison I have is that the iPhone is like Lindsay Lohan. It’s beautiful. It’s talented and yet it may never live up to all of it’s potential. Perhaps as it matures, we’ll see that it can move beyond it’s current issues to be something really special, not just the attractive thing of the moment.

I know what you’re thinking: Speak-n-Spell 2.0! Unfortunately, that’s not the case. What we’ve got here is the soon-to-be DOA StudentMate, a UMPC-like device that doesn’t really pass the test. Sure, it has a touchscreen and weighs less than 2 pounds. But that’s where things begin to go downhill…

“It has 128MB of memory, no HDD, but the memory is expandable by both SD cards and USB. As far as software goes it has a web browser, word processor, spread sheet software, contact list, a clock and calendar. For students there is also a calculator, typing tutor, home work helper, student summary list, and a mail client.”

Cool. A homework helper and a typing tutor? How very Mavis Bacon of the device to include some old-school keyboarding instruction. We could go on, but you can read more tragic “My1stUMPC” news over at Slashgear.

Everybody in the house is mad at me over the iPhone No, we weren’t early adopters who got hosed by Steve. I opened my big mouth as a joke and convinced my non-techie mother to get an iPhone. Now the wife and kids are mad that she got one first! My  daughter argued that she needs and iPhone so that she can show my mother how to use hers. Good argument. Not a chance.

My mother is actually a good iPhone candidate. She wanted a “simple, no frills phone” but those don’t really exist any more. She’s been wanting an iPod for when she walks in the morning but she takes a phone as well for emergencies. She’s just getting into email and is a gmail user.

The iPhone is stylish enough for her. The basics are easy. She can get email, carry only one device when she walks and she’s getting a lot of attention with it. On the down side, she will need a case for carrying it in her purse and she often keeps a cell phone for 5 years (I know, how is that possible?!), so she may have battery issues down the road. Carrying around pictures of the grand kids is a plus I didn’t even consider until we hooked it up. I’m not sure that the over 60 set is Apple’s target demographic but now I’ve got an I phone to play with without giving up my regular phone.

Kevin Tofel of JKontherun seems to have the cleanest round up of the new Apple products announced today so I’ll point you there. The iPod Touch looks cool with many of the plusses of the iPhone without the phone part to slow you down.

I still hate that pig of an app known as iTunes so I don’t plan on changing any time soon. I am still frustrated with my Blackjack. I still have problems with Bluetooth stereo headsets and my battery is about 1/2 of what it once was but unlike iPods, I can buy new batteries and install them myself!

How to save $10 million…

Don’t build products in secret. Get the community involved before the thing is done.Yes, this might even work for Apple!