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…)

Laptops for gaming are gaining popularity because, despite their cost and weight, they are still portable, and allow gamers to congregate to compete. Hardware performance improves constantly as well, so being tied to a desk is no longer required for serious gamers. 

You could even make the case that gaming is driving some of the technology such as dual core processors and video power.  New features on laptops for gaming include those as well as larger hard drives, increased memory, and batteries with longer life.  Now you can even add a mobile broadband card and log in from just about any location in the U.S.

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After drooling over rumours of a multi-touch Apple sub-notebook recently, Dell has now given a demonstration of multi-touch on an ultraportable, called the Latitude XT.

The demo, which took place at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco, was filmed by ZDNet and is available on YouTube here.

Introducing the hardware, CEO Michael Dell said: “this tablet has some pretty interesting things about it. It’s the industry’s thinnest 12.1-inch convertible tablet [and] it’s got a screen that’s 25 per cent brighter than the nearest screen in the industry.” One of the “interesting things” certainly doesn’t appear to be the chassis design, which remains a dull black.

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Apple Insider and CNET are both reporting that sources at Asus have said their working with Apple on a Tablet PC.  CNET says while their constantly overwhelmed with Mac rumors, “Asus is Apple’s contract manufacturer. It’s one of the companies responsible for building the iBooks, PowerBooks and MacBooks of this world, so when their guys tell us they’re building an Apple Tablet, we believe them.”

Laptop computers are more expensive than desktop computers, but despite what you might think, you can still buy a cheap laptop computer that has all of the specs you are looking for.  Don’t think of it as a cheap laptop, think instead that you will be getting a good deal on a laptop!  Here’s how to search for discount prices and find a cheap laptop or notebook computer that meets your needs.

The first way to save on a laptop is to skip brand names.  Trying to find a Sony or Dell that is new and inexpensive isn’t impossible, but you can buy more firepower in a laptop if you don’t get hung up on labels.  You can buy other names or even “no name” laptops which contain the same component parts by manufacturers such as Intel, Athlon, Sony, Seagate, and other major companies.  The internal quality can be just the same.  Buying a lesser known or unknown brand will take a little more investigation on your part to find out what is included inside.  Make sure you get a generous return policy too, in case the system just doesn’t measure up.

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