Hello, I am a member of the VAIO library team. There are some .mod files in the recovery disks which you can also patch. These will also enable instant on and some other software to work on the device.
You know what I love about this channel? No BS. The title says what the video is. No clickbait thumbnail with a big question mark saying "Have you seen THIS laptop?" You show us what you're doing, you do it, we like it. Perfect.
if you don't like titles like this, use dearrow it's an extension from the creator of sponsorblock which implements user-submitted titles and thumbnails it asks you to pay $1 to use it but there are many ways you can ask to use it if you can't/don't want to pay (no money/sanctions/privacy concerns and similar stuff)
while original title of this video is "Sony's LAST little laptop!", user-submitted is "An Overview of the Sony Vaio VGN-P70H and the Downfall of the P-Series" and yes, they often look like the names of Java classes, but i would gladly spend a second more than usual to read the title than several minutes to realize the video is not about what i think it should be about
I used to lust after these, they seemed so futuristic at the time. It’s kind of funny how of their time they seem now - small yes but clearly held back by some pieces and unable to go any smaller than that.
I remember when these released as a kid, and I wanted one sooooooo bad. I still think they're charming and adorable and I love the design and the concept. But it looks like it'd be a complete PITA to use even ignoring it's poor performance.
Those physical Wi-Fi switches were the bane of my existence when they were on most laptops. Users would inadvertently hit the key or switch and have no idea why the internet stopped working. Can’t imagine the battery savings were enough to warrant the headaches.
I remember working on Dell laptops a long time ago that would by default auto-disable the wired network port when the machine was on battery. This was back before people became almost violently opposed to ever attaching a cable of any kind to their laptops like they are today. I was pulling my hair out reinstalling drivers for probably an hour before stumbling upon that setting buried in the power settings. I was furious, I wanted to put that laptop on the floor and jump up and down on it.
@@Max_Mustermann If you're computer is already on, then you can just do it via a menu toggle in almost any OS, which I prefer because as someone whom has done computer repair as a side hustle for almost 30 years since I was high school, I can't count how many times over the years I've had clients who barely know how to get on the internet, and check their Gmail come to me, and ask why the WiFi is not working, with one person come to me I've known most of my life having their husband who in was in his mid 60's at time get so fed up with their ACER laptop he chucked it out the window onto their driveway shattering it into pieces all over an FN+F3 keyboard WiFi kill switch combo he had no idea he had pressed, so I made sure to set them up with a desktop, and keyboard with no WiFi kill switch, and a WiFi extender with an ethernet port to put in their home office.
this comment makes me feel crazy for noticing the Wi-Fi switch as a kid. my brain just said “oh wifi switch neat” when i saw one for the first time and it was immediately ingrained in my brain
Believe me, the hardware Wi-Fi switch is an absolute godsend. It means that I can physically kill wireless connectivity without relying on Windows built-in 'soft' kill that has the ability to bug-out and turn itself on. Rather than being a feature to save battery life, it's more commonly found on older business and enterprise laptops for security.
I have a Vaio VGN90HS which I received that was in the Vista (Japanese) oobe setup wizard, just waiting to start installation. I'd made a Norton Ghost image and uploaded to the internet archive as "Sony Vaio P Series VGN 90HS Vista Hard Drive Image". It includes a working instant boot partition (and recovery partition). Pretty sure will work on most 1st gen VAIOs, I think the main thing that changed was the CPU / drive / memory between models, a way to get around locks in the installation media. I did a teardown video replacing the factory SSD.
Love this video, bought a vaio p some months ago and use it as a "fun project" with debian 12 (no gui) mostly for nvim note taking and light coding, it works well for this specific use case :D I really like the form factor and hope this type of devices return (aside from GPD devices). Thanks for the great video.
@@trashman8080 for me it's not the same foot print at all, I like GPD's product line but they have no device with with the footprint based on the keyboard alone, no ultrawode type of footprint. Also the device they make that's most like this Vaio would probably be somewhere in the GPD pocket line which have no gaming controls
@@dreamingthelife They better not making something similar to this. It would significantly more compromised than the tiny laptops model they already have.
I have always loved the design of these computers. I know now a tablet with a keyboard case is a million times better, but I’d still totally buy a modern version of the P with an edge to edge touch screen and one of those yoga book style hinges to fold the keyboard back.
@@Balrog-tf3bgtrue but so expensive! I would love to replicate this device using a raspberry or similar sbc but projects are way too out of my league cause I don't know electronics. Any tip is appreciated.
I've jumped onto this model from Toshiba's Libretto. Loved the form factor but the performance, even with all the tweaks, was just...well. This. Pretty much until GPD came out with their Pocket line, this form factor was below expectations in performace departament. But damn if doesn't it looks sliiiiiick.
Thanks for filming this review. I got the "crocodile leather" Vaio P off of eBay a few years ago for next to nothing from a lawyer who bought it new many years before. He barely used it and it was in great shape. I may still have the recovery CD somewhere. I eventually installed Windows 7 with all drivers that were still found on the internet. I'm pretty sure I have them saved on my NAS. I also dual-booted with Arch 32 running i3 and performance is just okay. Browsing is really painful with anything more than 1 tab, DOSBox games run just okay, and I couldn't get FreeDOS and sbemu to work consistently last time I tried. It's a fun little toy, but nothing more, and I use it to run SonicStage on an MZ-RH1 MD. I really loved the form factor, though, and I wish someone passionate and knowledgeable like polymatt would bother restoring it (battery mostly) and even doing a gut-level upgrade while maintaining the form factor. I know that GPD tried to get close to it with the Pocket, but it's just not the same thing.
1:21 - SD card readers weren't that uncommon on later VAIOs. My old CS series also had one in addition to a Memory Stick reader. Although it is interesting that they put two card readers in such a small machine.
3:44 Hey! That was me! haha I bought my P-series on a whim (thanks, eBay ... you've clearly got my number) and it had the recovery partition still, so I took advantage of that! :-) It took a few tries, because the USB ports are a bit anemic, and my burner (a variation of that same Pioneer BD-RW drive) had trouble burning a disc until I powered it externally. Bear that in mind if you run into any issues with external drives. Sorry it didn't work out quite right for your model, but glad you found a partial workaround. 👍
I have one of these and used it a lot in server rooms for SSHing into servers, was also great for timesheets and invoices... as an IT contractor this was a good little tool.
That Recovery Patcher look really useful. Thanks for showing it. Well done on the restore effort here. I always wondered about what these odd machines are like.
“The world wasn't interested in a solution in search of a problem. “ I always wanted one of these laptops, but your closing sentence kicked me in the stomach. Simply brilliant.
I legitimately still daily drive one of these, in bright pink, used as a dedicated writing device. It's still the smallest laptop that manages to have a usable keyboard while legitimately fitting comfortably in my purse.
Great content as usual! I had one of these - the VGN-P21Z bought in 2010. At that point they where sold at about half launch price in Sweden, probably because they didn't sell well and clearing out the stock was needed. It was never more than a novelty to me, performance was too low straight out of the box. Used on a few trips but nothing more than that. My model had a built-in 3G modem and GPS as well, quite rare at the time!
I Absolutely adored the form factor of the P series. The idea of focusing in the keyboard form factor and having the very low height because of the no trackpad and very wide display was such a huge appeal to me. I have one now many years later after admiring them in store, but they are particularly bad on performance when it comes to netbooks. My primary back in the day was a Eee 900HA and that little thing blew the P series out of the water. The only reason i even stopped using it was the screen resolution eventually became too restrictive as technology progressed ans websites used high resolution pages. If someone were to come out with a modern clone of the P series but with modern hardwear to fix the performance issues id 100% be buying one.
I worked at an electrical retailer when the P series came out and I lusted after them...until I tried one. Absolutely beautiful design which is novel in that it genuinely can fit into the inside pocket of a coat whilst still having a decent enough sized keyboard. But the list of mistakes made was huge. The screen resolution is far too high for something so tiny, it's pretty much essential to have some sort of scaling turned on which leaves it barely having any more usable screen space than a 1st gen EEEPC. Even by netbook standards it is chronically underpowered, the two main weak points being the graphics which can't even run aero (which an EEEPC can) despite being bundled with Vista Premium in many markets, and the decision to use a miniature 1.8" spinning hard drive as the storage device when other manufacturers were using some sort of SSD at the time. It gave the P much more storage but it also made it excruciatingly slow. Don't rate that docking station either - a brick the size of the power supply clipped to it just to get VGA and Ethernet. Either it greatly increases the bulk for not much extra functionality if carrying the machine around or it gets left behind and lost. For the money this thing was shocking (IIRC it was a £1000 machine in a market which previously had considered £300 about the limit for a netbook, with many for sale well below that) . However I did always want one and picked one up a P19WN (yet another variant which was sold in the UK market) 6 or 7 years ago cheaply from ebay. If you put WIndows XP on it the machine will run relatively well but it's really not much practical use for anything other than as an email banger - nor even was it when brand new. A real shame because so much effort went into the design and had Sony just put in better hardware to create a true premium netbook to match the premium pricetag it could've been a big hit.
With touchscreens and modern Windows being so receptive to them, I envision a modern version of this device equipped with a trackpoint and no touchpad would make for an awesome ultralight form factor. Slap a Ryzen APU in it, and you can enjoy some reasonably impressive gaming as well. A 2560x1080 ultrawide display with minimal bezels and no webcam on this device would be the cherry on top. Man, it's nice to dream.
Seemingly the perfect laptop... until you try using one! I'm 'fortunate' to have a top-spec one of these from nearly new - not cheap! With the aid of a good screen, additional high capacity battery (removable!!!), and a track-point that works fine you have a pretty decent formfactor if you have really good eyesight! Sadly even with the top-spec CPU even back in the day these things are too gutless to be genuinely useable. Sadly it's Atom CPU is not only really weak but saddled with a 'GPU' that while technically ok never had any decent drivers made for it - that's Intel! I... -Overclocked the snot out of mine - luckily a stable 2.2ghz that really crushed the standard battery. -Would strongly recommend running a stripped-out install of Windows 7, XP, or Linux if you can stand that OS. Vista makes this thing unusably painful. -They aren't too hard to dismantle so changing the spinning HDD for an (IDE!) SSD is a good idea, and while fine as standard you can swap in a better WiFi card... ...as it happens I ran mine with the smallest USB WiFi dongle I could find so I could install a BT hardware video decoder in the miniPCI slot - that made the laptop an acceptable media consumption device - did I mention Intel's drivers for the iGPU are absolute garage? -In the end I used it as an emulation box as it was just about up to PS1 and N64 with overclocking, until mobile phones got powerful enough to take over. I never had the heart to sell it being such a little work of art, but I remember my frustrations all too well to want to fire it up out of nostalgia - honestly, don't buy one unless you're the type to collect such things and you find a pretty one really, really cheap.
I believe this thing if given an ethernet port and better specs could be one hell of a netbook for sysadmins. Like think about it, back then this was at its peak but now you can cram more hardware in that size of a motherboard. Truly fascinating stuff, I always loved VAIO computers. I used to have a VAIO VPCEA24FM, which wasn't good for gaming (Intel Core i3-350M with integrated graphics and 4GB RAM) even though I tried to use it like that, but with a 13" screen it was cozy to use for any school projects.
This thing was just ahead of its time. Or behind the times, not sure which. The form factor might've done well in the PDA age, or been a good alternative to the GPD-type UMPCs today. In the late 2000s/early 2010s, we were all switching to smartphones netbooks were just about to transition to ultrabooks, so it feels like it was just poorly timed.
I bought one of these a few years ago in a slightly tipsy late night burst of nostalgia, having lusted after them when i saw them new. Holy moly it was slow, painfully. Even after adding an SSD.
This VAIO had a 2nd gen version. There is a project in the works on Hackaday which somewhat modernizes its insides with RPi zero 2w. EDIT: The hackaday project is for the gen1.
Oh that's me! ^~^ It's work-in-progress, I used the Vaio to demonstrate a KiCad technique, and I'm going to continue poking at it sometime soon - the components are planned out, just need to put them on the board and link them together.
Cathode Ray dude just did a long series on those weird fast boot media startup utilities from windows vista era, if anyone is wondering more about that, that series really does a good deep dive on that jank!
This looked like a perfect device for an IT field engineer/tech to take on site to service servers in a data center... I much prefer the mouse "nub" to a touchpad any day, as I find it more precise/easier to control the cursor.
I've the canadian version in black(think was 2ghz).... I 2nd any comments about it being trash; the harddrive be it physical or ssd it used pata(I forked out money for a runcore ssd in hopes of getting it to be a bit faster but was still trash)..... there was a video someone uploaded of driving over one and one of my favorite comments was something about "there goes a perfectly good file server" which summerized it's usability........ drivers for the gpu was biggest shortcoming as it gpu had been outsourced to PowerVR and intel did not pay them to develop the drivers; the result was subpar directx compatibility and broken opengl support(this explains the quake 3) which was only present in it's later drivers(if I recall there was a 3rd party gma500 driver from the community but I can't recall); for best speed use windows 7 premium(I tried everything including windows vista completely stripped down and premium as overall best** win10 might be better but wasn't out yet) ** if you can get a really thin copper sheet you can kinda passive cooling mod it to OC but there is absolutely no space for additional fans
As someone that owned one of the original designs of this, the C1 400Mhz Pentium 2, these were actually big improvement even though they were small and the keyboard was worse. The main issue with the original C1 was it was unbelievably hot to use and unless you propped it up was so hot you couldn't even touch the thing because it had an essentially nonexistent cooling solution with a full laptop CPU. I replaced mine with the U3 micro laptop which wasn't really any faster but was more comfortable to use due to less heat. Later on I picked one of these P series for 600 dollars and still have it now (as well as the U3) and it works great with XP which was what most of us that owned them ran instead via the Japanese drivers page since it was sold with XP in Japan.
I vaguely remember seeing these at the Sony Store back in the day. The drawbacks though really highlight why the iPad just demolished this product category.
This looks like something the director at our school and all the admin used to flex with meanwhile the school had to cancel art and music because there was no money for it.
@@jeinnerabdelin some contexts yes but in school subjects art means visual art, and often specifically means photorealistic pencil sketches and painting. If you’re lucky your art department will extend to wood block (or foam block) printing with paint and ink.
what makes this so slow is the GMA 500, it was a rebranded POWER VR SGX that can barely handle any 3D game and it lags even in the Aero theme, it has to be the worst integrated graphics of all time. Intel never made drivers for anything more than Vista and 7, you cant even install these in windows 10 or XP, im not joking. I have the 530h and i tried EVERYTHING, including that msata to zif adapter. Its ideal maybe for code and emulation but no more than that.
Wow, that's news to me, intel rebranded what an essentially android smartphone integrated graphics for computer usage, no wonder it's a usability disaster.
Great retrospective. I wanted one of these so badly for travel - I even ended up buying one from the Sony Store when they still existed, but discovered the chassis was bent, so I had to return it, and I never bought another. I loved the old PDAs, the quirky computers from the early to mid-2000s. There's no question that the current form factors are way more productive, but they're all sort of uniformly boring.
I have a Vaio in this series. It was very slow, so I bought a SSD disk, and installed myself (which was an interesting experience). This did improve performance, but maybe I did something wrong, because afterwards the computer started to crash/halt remarkably often. Is that an effect of messing up during the hardware install, of software/driver incompability do you think, or something else?
OMG I had one. I was traveling around the world for work 20 years ago and always wanted a light weight and fashionable laptop. I got it exactly this color as a birthday present and loved it. It travels everywhere with me and turned heads. Sony had the most fashionable cell phones as well 20 years ago, just so you know. Still have it.
Great video! It would be interesting to see you perform at least an SSD upgrade. Might break the device but still would be interesting to see the process.
It's not easy. The SSD interface is non-standard zif connector. There are options for later P-series models but the early P-series is more difficult to upgrade. The usual way is a zif to msata adapter then use a msata ssd but it depends on the P-series model whether it will work or not.
I recently bought one of those little P-Series for fun. Mine has a 64GB SSD which interestingly is connected via a flat flex ide to sata adapter cable. I upgraded the wifi with a modern intel wireless ac card to improve wifi speeds and power-consumption. Now I'm looking into getting a re-celled high-capacity battery to replace the ageing original battery. The SD Card slot is pretty useful since it is sdxc capable. Biggest card I've tried was a 512GB with no issues.
Interesting. What about performance after those upgrades? Are you documenting your findings in a website or similar? Would love to read more about it. Thanks.
I actually have the US version. In 2010 I saw it in a store and wanted one sooooo badly, and around 2016 I managed to get one on eBay for something like $159 at the time. Mine still works, battery even still holds a charge, but it's stuck with the 80GB hard drive which further slows down the already paltry CPU. Since it is just a ZIF IDE drive though I might try to get one of the iFlash adapters (usually sold for upgrading clickwheel iPods) to connect up an mSATA SSD, which might be a viable option to get better performance out of one of these today. (FYI for others: don't go overboard on the SSD, a 64GB or 128GB mSATA can be found typically for ~$20. No real point in sticking 1TB in this thing unless maybe you want to store a ton of audio or poorly-compressed SD video.) The other significant limitation today is that these things only have a 32-bit CPU, so many modern OSes simply won't run. For Linux, if you're a tinkerer, a stock Debian i686 distro may work best, because most all of the "mainstream" Linuxes (Arch, Ubuntu, etc.) have long since dropped 32-bit CPU support. These may actually be some of the last end-user PCs sold with 32-bit only Intel CPUs, as by 2010 even netbooks tended to have 64-bit capable Atoms in them (and these were definitely still being sold at retail in late 2010 which is when I saw it in store).
That was weirdly popular back in the day. My HP had that "LINUX MEDIA PLAYER OS" on it as well. Wait is that keyboard that annoying membrane type where it sticks for a fraction of a second and then violently returns to position? I remember some of those membranes back in the day. They were cool looking laptops, super expensive, and neat ideas. LUCKILY GPD and ONE X kind of brought these little guys back, but with respetable chips for the former. The latter dabbles here and there, but usually sticks with above Celeron and Atom, but heavily Neutered i3 chips.
I always wanted this particular VAIO, I remember seeing it in Fry's Electronics back in the day and it seemed so cool to me and that never stopped. I think I like the fact that the screen size conformed to the keyboard, almost like some strange amalgamation of a keyboard PC with a notebook PC. I still want one, I'll get one someday. Also, I know the pain of searching for vintage VAIO drivers, my 2001 SR27 model with Windows ME seems to not exist anywhere
I wouldn't say useless. If you're in need of a small size portable terminal it might still serve well. It's portable, it can start a Linux command line and you can use USB to serial. Don't know what they go for second hand, but it would be something I would be inclined to try Small commandline tasks. Configuring switches, deploying embedded firmware, anything serial or network related. Not everything is Gui centered you know😮
@@CommodoreFan64 yes you could, but that is a rather useless comment. The question is: can this particular system still do something useful? The answer is: yes it can. Should you go look for one? Likely not, there are easier options. But again not the point. When someone gives you a second hand car, are you going to ask what it is good for? Tell them there are better cars available? I for one will just be happy and try to give it a useful purpose any way possible.
oh hey the vaio has quickboot, that uses a hidden partition on the disk to "instant boot" a very basic linux OS that has a webbrowser and some very basic media tools you are not missing much, those were usually on vista laptops because laptops used to take over a minute to load vista thanks to slow harddrives and lots of bloatware, frustrating the end user
I will forever love tiny yet usable "laptops". Perhaps we now have the technology to actually make it work, looking at how much processing and rendering power is being crammed into flat thin tablets.
I remember seeing the US version of this machine in Fry's Electronics in 2009, when I went there to buy a netbook. I had already pretty much decided on the cheap but decent Acer Aspire One (in blue!), which seemed to make all the right compromises to meet the price and size expectations of a netbook for me. Nonetheless, I took a look at Sony's offering and, even just trying it out in the store, I was left wondering who would buy such a thing. The Acer came with Windows XP pre-installed, which ran quite well on it and looked good on the small but bright screen Acer had chosen, and it seemed surprisingly speedy when opening office applications or browsing the web. The Sony, by contrast, had (as mentioned) Windows Vista, which slurped up all of the machine's limited resources just to, well, run Vista by itself, making opening any of the pre-installed applications or browsing the web glacially slow. Add to that the fact that 2009 was prime "everyone hates Vista" time, and the choice of OS by Sony was quite perplexing (even much more powerful laptops on display came with XP to satisfy customer demand!). And, yeah, while the Acer's keyboard was reduced in size, it was still large enough to type neatly on and had a decent key action, while even leaving enough space for a small trackpad, while the Sony machine was awful to type on and felt much more cramped. About the only thing I remember liking about the Sony was just how clean and sharp the picture looked, as a static image, comparable to the beautiful screen they used in the PSP. However, a $900+ picture frame wasn't what I was there for, and the Acer was easier to use, more pleasant to use, had more resources leftover from the OS to run applications well, and even had a bigger (if cheaper) screen, all for about $300! Since I was buying a netbook as a travel machine, one that would be powerful enough to use for typing, email, and web browsing, with some light gaming, while traveling but still cheap enough that I wouldn't be paranoid about it being stolen from my hotel room, choosing the Acer was an easy choice. The best I can say about Sony's little machine -- and so many others that they made in that era -- was that at least they tried to be different, and sometimes that's important for pushing the state of the art. Just... not this time.
I have one of these too, the best upgrade you can do is stick a ssd in it and it makes it better on load times but yes its very slow for what it is and i think best os would be windows xp which should make it real snappy.
I remember wanting one of these so bad but got a regular sized netbook instead. I remember having to squint and struggle even those were larger and was glad I didn't get the viao. Still a net little device though.
Personally I loved mine, and still own it (and bought a second one in gold) though I don't use it as my main laptop anymore. It was seriously flawed with its limited RAM and processor, but I did find once it had actually booted up properly it was fine for general use, and I found it very handy in College to type notes while also keeping my classroom desk space for papers and other items, while also being really easy to grab and take to the next class, was able to use the dongle to take advantage of ethernet, it even fit into my jacket pocket like the adverts loved to show. Part of me wishes if VAIO hadn't been sold off that they'd have brought a newer and more capable version out using more up to date hardware when all the lightweight slim Intel laptops got a couple of generations upgrade, but the small screen did hold it back despite that dimension being its core design feature so it wouldn't sell that well in today's world of ever more capable tablets and decent spec lightweight laptops.
Also when my desktop's motherboard died, I ended up using it as my main desktop PC for a couple of months, despite lack of performance it still browsed just fine and when connected up to my monitor and tethered to wall power for max performance it did just fine, the only thing I really missed was not being able to game.
I wanted one of these so bad back in the day when I was always on the road, when I was going as small as I could when average laptops were so bulky at the time. They were just too expensive.
Speaking as someone who daily-drove Linux on one of these atom netbooks (a Dell one, but with similar specs to this Vaio) during the period, I can confidently say that Linux would not have improved the experience much. The GMA 500 chipset was licensed from PowerVR so Intel's open-source drivers don't work for it. The driver that does exist is barebones and written by a single guy. Even in the best case, you're looking at barely being able to hit 1366x768 on the desktop without any kind of hw-accelerated video playback and no 3D acceleration at all.
I have one of these! The SD card and Sony Memory Stick (uses Duo size) card slots can be simultaneously be used in a vain attempt to increase the amount of usable space. It is slow af tho as noted from the video and even if you booted into the crossmedia system, yeah, it's still just as laggy as it is on Windows.
I bought one of these when they were on the way out. Swapping out the spinning hard drive for flash memory made it significantly more useable. Since it uses the same hard drive type as classic iPods, I used a Compact Flash adapter with a CF card large enough to install Vista (probably 32 GB). But watching standard definition video required helping the processor stay cool with an external fan or spritzing the plastic shell of the computer with water. Not advised, but it was enough to get mine to play video without hitching.
I have a Sony Vaio PCG-21313M which was similar and comes with a Windows 7 key. I upgraded it to the x86 Debian Linux distribution from Raspberry Pi. It is fast and works well. All of the standard training software that you would find on a Raspberry Pi desktop is present.
I have the Sony VGN-P11Z, with 2 ghz cpu and 2 gb of ram. Taken to old hard drive out, and installed small ssd m.2 drive in its place. Managed to get a stripped down version of Windows 10 running on. The battery is very poor condition. But works great as a compact pc.
The vaio p series was fantastic! I wish that we could get more designs like this again. standard size/stripped down keyboard with trackpoint, display to match the size, nice and thin. but with a modern low power cpu, ddr5, wifi 6e, and modern lithium polymer battery.
Always a pleasure to listen to you. Wonderful to listen to you, your emphasis, the rhetoric. Found your channel once I was looking for some MiniDisc stuff.
I got a Sony Vaio laptop for college in 2005 and I loved it, but in retrospect, my parents paid far, far too much for something that became outdated so fast (and it couldn't play games all that well either, besides emulators, which admittedly was what I wanted to play on it lol). It was cool looking - a dark red color, I don't remember the model. I miss Vaios haha
The proper Vaio laptops were pretty consistent devices. My roommate in undergrad a few years later had a Vaio laptop (probably navy blue) and at one point actually had someone come out for on-site hardware support in our dorm.
I use a Toshiba Netbook running AntiX Linux to run a network pi-hole. It's no beast of a system, but it's set it, forget it, and SSH into it when updates need to be checked for. And the pihole does amazingly well.
I remember going to Fry's Electronics and seeing the VAIO laptops and thinking how cool they looked and how far out of my price range they were. Thank God, because I probably would have bought on if they were a bit cheaper.
I have one which I bought secondhand around 14 years ago. The looks and quality was great. The reality was that the screen was too small for the high resolution, and the performance was dreadful with the native vista OS. Might boot it up for giggles, like my Libretto 50CT
Hey, please get your hands on SONY VAIO DUO 11 (or 13). Extremely underrated, brilliant machines! I own 1 (and couple more for scrap parts), and they still look futuristic and fast! Only unfortunate part is the lack or RAM upgradability, also how expensive the spare parts prices are... Seriously, check it out, you will love it!
I loved my p2 400mhz version, but then ended up getting a nettbook. I could fit in my baggy jeans back pocket! You're making me want to go find it in storage! Man what a trip down memory lane!
I actually wanted one of these in 2010 but refrained because it was too expensive for just an Atom processor with 2GiB RAM. Watching this video, I was right.
Imagine if these were to be rebooted but using a modern AMD APU with hardware similar to the Steam Deck. Drop the resolution a bit for the smaller display so it's not "squinty", include a USB C Dock by default to use at the desk, and you got yourself a really sweet UMPC that's capable of being a daily driver especially when used at a desk. Need a bigger screen? USB-C lapdock. It'd be a very versatile little machine for sure! I love my Steam Deck as my primary PC, I just wish I could keep it in my pocket while out! Also, I remember seeing a Vaio P at Fry's back in the day in person, I noticed it was using the "Vista/7 Basic" theme, I went to enable Aero, and I noticed it just couldn't even carry the weight of the OS alone in all it's glory. Beautiful handheld, garbage chipset.
I had one of these and also the UX. Loved both but plagued by seemingly poor hardware choices. While the UX had a dual core CPU, it only had 1GB MAX of ram. The P I had was a single core CPU with 2GB of ram, but its performance was so bad. Ended up selling both because neither were useable.
I had a Fujitsu Lifebook U810 as my primary computer for about a year and a half - which is almost impossible to believe when I look back. Weird old Intel A110 CPU, slow 4200 rpm 1.8" drive, and came with Vista installed, which made it basically useless too. Remarkably similar machines. No idea how I used one for so long.
My dad owned Windows ME based small Sony VAIO Laptops and man that thing sucked with ME on it. It blue screened majority of the time. When he upgraded it to Windows 2000 it really made a difference.
These were a joy to type on but were unfortunately held back by the battery life and slow hardware, especially for the cheapest P11Z model. Loved the form factor though.
spent a lot on a vaio tx, was a wonderful small machine. Used it as main pc until my wrists hurt ;) motherboard died, cost a fortune to repair (like 1500us), it died again and no warranty. Gave up on vaio after that.
Acer and Asus did so much better with their netbooks. The extra weight and bulk was worth the performance and potential to upgrade. My Acer Aspire One's new aftermarket battery is ridiculous and sticks out the back, but the 15 year old machine still works just fine, fast enough for low end Linux computing.
Had someone drop a bunch of old computers off at the store I work at saying we could do what we want with them. Most of them were ancient junk but one of these was in the pile (VGN-P15G). I love computing oddities and couldn't let the thing go to e-waste so kept it. Such a unique little machine that I figured I could find some use for and had pretty much forgotten about it until this video popped up on my recommended.
I actually bought one of these new when they came out. (US model) It was horrible for most uses, screen lagged if you tried to watch videos, I ended up using it for a tuner for my car (megasquirt) which it was amazing for, until a friend stepped on it and broke the screen. At that time it was not worth trying to replace. Was a cool idea but i have never been able to use the eraser style mouse lol Funny enough, I had the UX series as well later, same thing, quite useless but worked great for a tuner, infact I believe my friend still has it (honestly the UX ran better)
6:15 this kinda reminds me of Windows media player. That was a resource hog, too. Since this app was designed to work with the button, it probably booted into a ,,minimal configuration,, mode where only crutial components were used to keep the experience smoother
Tou know you can open up software on the recovery disk and install them in windows. You can also right click on the device you want to install then browse the cd for the driver. So if its the wrong disk but has the same drivers you can use just the drivers off disk you can also unpack the iso to get any of the pre installed software off the disk. If you cant find any restore disks you can remove the hard drive and install the drivers off the original disk by browsing for them from the original install. You dont need a driver installer you just need the driver files. You can use the windows device manager to install drivers. Before you restore a computer dump the device folder from the original install on a flash drive that will also work.
Hello, I am a member of the VAIO library team. There are some .mod files in the recovery disks which you can also patch. These will also enable instant on and some other software to work on the device.
this was posted 4 minutes ago? how did you comment 2 days ago?
@@SoSo-li6dn time travel
@@SoSo-li6dn i dont realize untul i see your comment
Doing the Lord's work
@@SoSo-li6dn
He is a time traveler. They are quite common these days.
You know what I love about this channel? No BS. The title says what the video is. No clickbait thumbnail with a big question mark saying "Have you seen THIS laptop?" You show us what you're doing, you do it, we like it. Perfect.
This laptop is lidurully insane!
But the title was so tempting good💯
Oh you’re gonna hate the the next video uploaded after this one in this channel, it has a question mark.
if you don't like titles like this, use dearrow
it's an extension from the creator of sponsorblock which implements user-submitted titles and thumbnails
it asks you to pay $1 to use it but there are many ways you can ask to use it if you can't/don't want to pay (no money/sanctions/privacy concerns and similar stuff)
while original title of this video is "Sony's LAST little laptop!", user-submitted is "An Overview of the Sony Vaio VGN-P70H and the Downfall of the P-Series"
and yes, they often look like the names of Java classes, but i would gladly spend a second more than usual to read the title than several minutes to realize the video is not about what i think it should be about
I used to lust after these, they seemed so futuristic at the time. It’s kind of funny how of their time they seem now - small yes but clearly held back by some pieces and unable to go any smaller than that.
Cell phones took that spot.
GPD laptops: Allow us to introduce ourselves
@@fungo6631GPD design and build looks so ugly.
Better one is Chuwi
Same, I wanted one of these so bad
same!!!!! every time i walked passed one. i would stop and consider buying it but i never was able to justify the price.
What a cool little device. I love how Sony Vaio devices of that time period were just so unique.
I remember reading about these things in tech magazines. It's like whenever you upload it's a like an injection of nostalgia.
I remember when these released as a kid, and I wanted one sooooooo bad. I still think they're charming and adorable and I love the design and the concept. But it looks like it'd be a complete PITA to use even ignoring it's poor performance.
Yeah, i own one now and it can't even play a 720p video downscaled to 240p smoothly
Those physical Wi-Fi switches were the bane of my existence when they were on most laptops. Users would inadvertently hit the key or switch and have no idea why the internet stopped working. Can’t imagine the battery savings were enough to warrant the headaches.
They are quite useful when on a plane. Or if one wants to quickly kill the Internet connection for whatever reason.
I remember working on Dell laptops a long time ago that would by default auto-disable the wired network port when the machine was on battery. This was back before people became almost violently opposed to ever attaching a cable of any kind to their laptops like they are today. I was pulling my hair out reinstalling drivers for probably an hour before stumbling upon that setting buried in the power settings. I was furious, I wanted to put that laptop on the floor and jump up and down on it.
@@Max_Mustermann If you're computer is already on, then you can just do it via a menu toggle in almost any OS, which I prefer because as someone whom has done computer repair as a side hustle for almost 30 years since I was high school, I can't count how many times over the years I've had clients who barely know how to get on the internet, and check their Gmail come to me, and ask why the WiFi is not working, with one person come to me I've known most of my life having their husband who in was in his mid 60's at time get so fed up with their ACER laptop he chucked it out the window onto their driveway shattering it into pieces all over an FN+F3 keyboard WiFi kill switch combo he had no idea he had pressed, so I made sure to set them up with a desktop, and keyboard with no WiFi kill switch, and a WiFi extender with an ethernet port to put in their home office.
this comment makes me feel crazy for noticing the Wi-Fi switch as a kid. my brain just said “oh wifi switch neat” when i saw one for the first time and it was immediately ingrained in my brain
Believe me, the hardware Wi-Fi switch is an absolute godsend. It means that I can physically kill wireless connectivity without relying on Windows built-in 'soft' kill that has the ability to bug-out and turn itself on. Rather than being a feature to save battery life, it's more commonly found on older business and enterprise laptops for security.
I have a Vaio VGN90HS which I received that was in the Vista (Japanese) oobe setup wizard, just waiting to start installation. I'd made a Norton Ghost image and uploaded to the internet archive as "Sony Vaio P Series VGN 90HS Vista Hard Drive Image".
It includes a working instant boot partition (and recovery partition). Pretty sure will work on most 1st gen VAIOs, I think the main thing that changed was the CPU / drive / memory between models, a way to get around locks in the installation media. I did a teardown video replacing the factory SSD.
Love this video, bought a vaio p some months ago and use it as a "fun project" with debian 12 (no gui) mostly for nvim note taking and light coding, it works well for this specific use case :D I really like the form factor and hope this type of devices return (aside from GPD devices).
Thanks for the great video.
I love tiny laptops like this. I think GPD and some other companies make modern laptops in the same footprint as this.
you think they do or you think they should?, I'm pretty sure they don't but I wish they would.
@@dreamingthelife they do, theres gpd win max 2 and the smaller gpd win mini
@@trashman8080 for me it's not the same foot print at all, I like GPD's product line but they have no device with with the footprint based on the keyboard alone, no ultrawode type of footprint.
Also the device they make that's most like this Vaio would probably be somewhere in the GPD pocket line which have no gaming controls
I have the GPD Pocket 2 for 3 years already and I love it ❤
@@dreamingthelife They better not making something similar to this. It would significantly more compromised than the tiny laptops model they already have.
I have always loved the design of these computers. I know now a tablet with a keyboard case is a million times better, but I’d still totally buy a modern version of the P with an edge to edge touch screen and one of those yoga book style hinges to fold the keyboard back.
I also have a soft spot for unconventional form factors. I wish the PC market could sustain more variety.
GPD pocket PC is probably about the closest you can get to this nowadays
@@Balrog-tf3bgtrue but so expensive! I would love to replicate this device using a raspberry or similar sbc but projects are way too out of my league cause I don't know electronics. Any tip is appreciated.
I've jumped onto this model from Toshiba's Libretto. Loved the form factor but the performance, even with all the tweaks, was just...well.
This.
Pretty much until GPD came out with their Pocket line, this form factor was below expectations in performace departament.
But damn if doesn't it looks sliiiiiick.
Thanks for filming this review. I got the "crocodile leather" Vaio P off of eBay a few years ago for next to nothing from a lawyer who bought it new many years before. He barely used it and it was in great shape. I may still have the recovery CD somewhere. I eventually installed Windows 7 with all drivers that were still found on the internet. I'm pretty sure I have them saved on my NAS. I also dual-booted with Arch 32 running i3 and performance is just okay. Browsing is really painful with anything more than 1 tab, DOSBox games run just okay, and I couldn't get FreeDOS and sbemu to work consistently last time I tried. It's a fun little toy, but nothing more, and I use it to run SonicStage on an MZ-RH1 MD. I really loved the form factor, though, and I wish someone passionate and knowledgeable like polymatt would bother restoring it (battery mostly) and even doing a gut-level upgrade while maintaining the form factor. I know that GPD tried to get close to it with the Pocket, but it's just not the same thing.
A guy on reddit rearranged the guts of one of these with a banana pi board. If i remember correctly it was on the r/cyberdeck.
2:41 What is this ASCII aquarium program, and where can I get it? 🐠🐟🐠🐟
1:21 - SD card readers weren't that uncommon on later VAIOs. My old CS series also had one in addition to a Memory Stick reader. Although it is interesting that they put two card readers in such a small machine.
I think Sony added SD card reader to their VAIO starting from around 2006-2007.
@@ku-1500 That sounds about right, mine was bought in 2008.
The CS was my laptop too lol. Loved the cool light at the bottom and touch a/v controls
3:44 Hey! That was me! haha I bought my P-series on a whim (thanks, eBay ... you've clearly got my number) and it had the recovery partition still, so I took advantage of that! :-) It took a few tries, because the USB ports are a bit anemic, and my burner (a variation of that same Pioneer BD-RW drive) had trouble burning a disc until I powered it externally. Bear that in mind if you run into any issues with external drives.
Sorry it didn't work out quite right for your model, but glad you found a partial workaround. 👍
I have one of these and used it a lot in server rooms for SSHing into servers, was also great for timesheets and invoices... as an IT contractor this was a good little tool.
I'm guessing you were also able to bill the customer for the time it took to create the invoice.
@@WinrichNaujoks 😂the crappy device has 1 thread at 1.33ghz. Slower than a modern toaster
That Recovery Patcher look really useful. Thanks for showing it. Well done on the restore effort here. I always wondered about what these odd machines are like.
great seeing you here always love your vids
It's nice seeing you here
“The world wasn't interested in a solution in search of a problem. “ I always wanted one of these laptops, but your closing sentence kicked me in the stomach. Simply brilliant.
Vaio had such beautiful systems loved my vaio laptops
I legitimately still daily drive one of these, in bright pink, used as a dedicated writing device. It's still the smallest laptop that manages to have a usable keyboard while legitimately fitting comfortably in my purse.
Great content as usual! I had one of these - the VGN-P21Z bought in 2010. At that point they where sold at about half launch price in Sweden, probably because they didn't sell well and clearing out the stock was needed. It was never more than a novelty to me, performance was too low straight out of the box. Used on a few trips but nothing more than that. My model had a built-in 3G modem and GPS as well, quite rare at the time!
I Absolutely adored the form factor of the P series. The idea of focusing in the keyboard form factor and having the very low height because of the no trackpad and very wide display was such a huge appeal to me.
I have one now many years later after admiring them in store, but they are particularly bad on performance when it comes to netbooks. My primary back in the day was a Eee 900HA and that little thing blew the P series out of the water. The only reason i even stopped using it was the screen resolution eventually became too restrictive as technology progressed ans websites used high resolution pages.
If someone were to come out with a modern clone of the P series but with modern hardwear to fix the performance issues id 100% be buying one.
GPD pocket?
I remember seeing these laptops. They cost around $900. That was and still is a lot of money. For an Intel Atom processor? A robbery!
I worked at an electrical retailer when the P series came out and I lusted after them...until I tried one. Absolutely beautiful design which is novel in that it genuinely can fit into the inside pocket of a coat whilst still having a decent enough sized keyboard. But the list of mistakes made was huge. The screen resolution is far too high for something so tiny, it's pretty much essential to have some sort of scaling turned on which leaves it barely having any more usable screen space than a 1st gen EEEPC. Even by netbook standards it is chronically underpowered, the two main weak points being the graphics which can't even run aero (which an EEEPC can) despite being bundled with Vista Premium in many markets, and the decision to use a miniature 1.8" spinning hard drive as the storage device when other manufacturers were using some sort of SSD at the time. It gave the P much more storage but it also made it excruciatingly slow. Don't rate that docking station either - a brick the size of the power supply clipped to it just to get VGA and Ethernet. Either it greatly increases the bulk for not much extra functionality if carrying the machine around or it gets left behind and lost. For the money this thing was shocking (IIRC it was a £1000 machine in a market which previously had considered £300 about the limit for a netbook, with many for sale well below that) . However I did always want one and picked one up a P19WN (yet another variant which was sold in the UK market) 6 or 7 years ago cheaply from ebay. If you put WIndows XP on it the machine will run relatively well but it's really not much practical use for anything other than as an email banger - nor even was it when brand new. A real shame because so much effort went into the design and had Sony just put in better hardware to create a true premium netbook to match the premium pricetag it could've been a big hit.
Super cool form factor. It would be interesting to see a computer like this produced today but there is probably closet to zero market for it.
GPD produces something similar
@@mandjziwas coming here to say this
Steamdeck with a keyboard case could be pretty close
iPad mini + keyboard case? I know, not a full PC but it shows what’s possible in this size today.
With touchscreens and modern Windows being so receptive to them, I envision a modern version of this device equipped with a trackpoint and no touchpad would make for an awesome ultralight form factor. Slap a Ryzen APU in it, and you can enjoy some reasonably impressive gaming as well. A 2560x1080 ultrawide display with minimal bezels and no webcam on this device would be the cherry on top. Man, it's nice to dream.
Seemingly the perfect laptop... until you try using one!
I'm 'fortunate' to have a top-spec one of these from nearly new - not cheap! With the aid of a good screen, additional high capacity battery (removable!!!), and a track-point that works fine you have a pretty decent formfactor if you have really good eyesight! Sadly even with the top-spec CPU even back in the day these things are too gutless to be genuinely useable. Sadly it's Atom CPU is not only really weak but saddled with a 'GPU' that while technically ok never had any decent drivers made for it - that's Intel!
I...
-Overclocked the snot out of mine - luckily a stable 2.2ghz that really crushed the standard battery.
-Would strongly recommend running a stripped-out install of Windows 7, XP, or Linux if you can stand that OS. Vista makes this thing unusably painful.
-They aren't too hard to dismantle so changing the spinning HDD for an (IDE!) SSD is a good idea, and while fine as standard you can swap in a better WiFi card...
...as it happens I ran mine with the smallest USB WiFi dongle I could find so I could install a BT hardware video decoder in the miniPCI slot - that made the laptop an acceptable media consumption device - did I mention Intel's drivers for the iGPU are absolute garage?
-In the end I used it as an emulation box as it was just about up to PS1 and N64 with overclocking, until mobile phones got powerful enough to take over.
I never had the heart to sell it being such a little work of art, but I remember my frustrations all too well to want to fire it up out of nostalgia - honestly, don't buy one unless you're the type to collect such things and you find a pretty one really, really cheap.
I believe this thing if given an ethernet port and better specs could be one hell of a netbook for sysadmins. Like think about it, back then this was at its peak but now you can cram more hardware in that size of a motherboard. Truly fascinating stuff, I always loved VAIO computers. I used to have a VAIO VPCEA24FM, which wasn't good for gaming (Intel Core i3-350M with integrated graphics and 4GB RAM) even though I tried to use it like that, but with a 13" screen it was cozy to use for any school projects.
This thing was just ahead of its time. Or behind the times, not sure which. The form factor might've done well in the PDA age, or been a good alternative to the GPD-type UMPCs today. In the late 2000s/early 2010s, we were all switching to smartphones netbooks were just about to transition to ultrabooks, so it feels like it was just poorly timed.
I bought one of these a few years ago in a slightly tipsy late night burst of nostalgia, having lusted after them when i saw them new. Holy moly it was slow, painfully. Even after adding an SSD.
I loved vaio devices they always had design so far ahead of the market. 15-20 years later I still want one
This VAIO had a 2nd gen version. There is a project in the works on Hackaday which somewhat modernizes its insides with RPi zero 2w.
EDIT: The hackaday project is for the gen1.
Oh that's me! ^~^ It's work-in-progress, I used the Vaio to demonstrate a KiCad technique, and I'm going to continue poking at it sometime soon - the components are planned out, just need to put them on the board and link them together.
@@AryaFairywrenI wanted to contact you, but was too lazy to make an account. I have 2 of these machines, and would love to help with your project.
Cathode Ray dude just did a long series on those weird fast boot media startup utilities from windows vista era, if anyone is wondering more about that, that series really does a good deep dive on that jank!
This looked like a perfect device for an IT field engineer/tech to take on site to service servers in a data center...
I much prefer the mouse "nub" to a touchpad any day, as I find it more precise/easier to control the cursor.
I've the canadian version in black(think was 2ghz).... I 2nd any comments about it being trash; the harddrive be it physical or ssd it used pata(I forked out money for a runcore ssd in hopes of getting it to be a bit faster but was still trash)..... there was a video someone uploaded of driving over one and one of my favorite comments was something about "there goes a perfectly good file server" which summerized it's usability........ drivers for the gpu was biggest shortcoming as it gpu had been outsourced to PowerVR and intel did not pay them to develop the drivers; the result was subpar directx compatibility and broken opengl support(this explains the quake 3) which was only present in it's later drivers(if I recall there was a 3rd party gma500 driver from the community but I can't recall); for best speed use windows 7 premium(I tried everything including windows vista completely stripped down and premium as overall best** win10 might be better but wasn't out yet) ** if you can get a really thin copper sheet you can kinda passive cooling mod it to OC but there is absolutely no space for additional fans
As someone that owned one of the original designs of this, the C1 400Mhz Pentium 2, these were actually big improvement even though they were small and the keyboard was worse. The main issue with the original C1 was it was unbelievably hot to use and unless you propped it up was so hot you couldn't even touch the thing because it had an essentially nonexistent cooling solution with a full laptop CPU. I replaced mine with the U3 micro laptop which wasn't really any faster but was more comfortable to use due to less heat. Later on I picked one of these P series for 600 dollars and still have it now (as well as the U3) and it works great with XP which was what most of us that owned them ran instead via the Japanese drivers page since it was sold with XP in Japan.
I vaguely remember seeing these at the Sony Store back in the day. The drawbacks though really highlight why the iPad just demolished this product category.
This looks like something the director at our school and all the admin used to flex with meanwhile the school had to cancel art and music because there was no money for it.
Isn't music considered art?
@@jeinnerabdelin some contexts yes but in school subjects art means visual art, and often specifically means photorealistic pencil sketches and painting. If you’re lucky your art department will extend to wood block (or foam block) printing with paint and ink.
what makes this so slow is the GMA 500, it was a rebranded POWER VR SGX that can barely handle any 3D game and it lags even in the Aero theme, it has to be the worst integrated graphics of all time. Intel never made drivers for anything more than Vista and 7, you cant even install these in windows 10 or XP, im not joking. I have the 530h and i tried EVERYTHING, including that msata to zif adapter. Its ideal maybe for code and emulation but no more than that.
Wow, that's news to me, intel rebranded what an essentially android smartphone integrated graphics for computer usage, no wonder it's a usability disaster.
Great retrospective. I wanted one of these so badly for travel - I even ended up buying one from the Sony Store when they still existed, but discovered the chassis was bent, so I had to return it, and I never bought another. I loved the old PDAs, the quirky computers from the early to mid-2000s. There's no question that the current form factors are way more productive, but they're all sort of uniformly boring.
This was majestically written. The last touch on Sony’s late consumerism was witty and spot-on! Thanks!
I loved this design back in the day. Wish they would release something like this with modern specs.
I have a Vaio in this series. It was very slow, so I bought a SSD disk, and installed myself (which was an interesting experience). This did improve performance, but maybe I did something wrong, because afterwards the computer started to crash/halt remarkably often.
Is that an effect of messing up during the hardware install, of software/driver incompability do you think, or something else?
OMG I had one. I was traveling around the world for work 20 years ago and always wanted a light weight and fashionable laptop. I got it exactly this color as a birthday present and loved it. It travels everywhere with me and turned heads. Sony had the most fashionable cell phones as well 20 years ago, just so you know. Still have it.
Great video! It would be interesting to see you perform at least an SSD upgrade. Might break the device but still would be interesting to see the process.
It's not easy. The SSD interface is non-standard zif connector. There are options for later P-series models but the early P-series is more difficult to upgrade. The usual way is a zif to msata adapter then use a msata ssd but it depends on the P-series model whether it will work or not.
The Vaio Duo series was another cool form factor Sony tried. I wish another manufacturer would give that a try.
if you are talking about the series with the slide up screen then GPD has make a couple handhelds like this.
oops I meant the UX, what were the Duo like?
@@dreamingthelife It slides up at an angle, so you can use it at a desk. There's videos of it out there.
I recently bought one of those little P-Series for fun. Mine has a 64GB SSD which interestingly is connected via a flat flex ide to sata adapter cable. I upgraded the wifi with a modern intel wireless ac card to improve wifi speeds and power-consumption. Now I'm looking into getting a re-celled high-capacity battery to replace the ageing original battery. The SD Card slot is pretty useful since it is sdxc capable. Biggest card I've tried was a 512GB with no issues.
Interesting. What about performance after those upgrades? Are you documenting your findings in a website or similar? Would love to read more about it. Thanks.
@@GraDays Will do. Haven't had a website for ages now but I might set something simple up. Or make a youtube video.
I'm interested in how it would compare as a portable Linux machine. Maybe the previous owner was on to something.
I actually have the US version. In 2010 I saw it in a store and wanted one sooooo badly, and around 2016 I managed to get one on eBay for something like $159 at the time. Mine still works, battery even still holds a charge, but it's stuck with the 80GB hard drive which further slows down the already paltry CPU. Since it is just a ZIF IDE drive though I might try to get one of the iFlash adapters (usually sold for upgrading clickwheel iPods) to connect up an mSATA SSD, which might be a viable option to get better performance out of one of these today. (FYI for others: don't go overboard on the SSD, a 64GB or 128GB mSATA can be found typically for ~$20. No real point in sticking 1TB in this thing unless maybe you want to store a ton of audio or poorly-compressed SD video.)
The other significant limitation today is that these things only have a 32-bit CPU, so many modern OSes simply won't run. For Linux, if you're a tinkerer, a stock Debian i686 distro may work best, because most all of the "mainstream" Linuxes (Arch, Ubuntu, etc.) have long since dropped 32-bit CPU support. These may actually be some of the last end-user PCs sold with 32-bit only Intel CPUs, as by 2010 even netbooks tended to have 64-bit capable Atoms in them (and these were definitely still being sold at retail in late 2010 which is when I saw it in store).
I still have my Vaio P too. It’s a Brazilian Market Version that came with a Digital TV Turner built in.
That was weirdly popular back in the day. My HP had that "LINUX MEDIA PLAYER OS" on it as well. Wait is that keyboard that annoying membrane type where it sticks for a fraction of a second and then violently returns to position? I remember some of those membranes back in the day. They were cool looking laptops, super expensive, and neat ideas. LUCKILY GPD and ONE X kind of brought these little guys back, but with respetable chips for the former. The latter dabbles here and there, but usually sticks with above Celeron and Atom, but heavily Neutered i3 chips.
I always wanted this particular VAIO, I remember seeing it in Fry's Electronics back in the day and it seemed so cool to me and that never stopped.
I think I like the fact that the screen size conformed to the keyboard, almost like some strange amalgamation of a keyboard PC with a notebook PC.
I still want one, I'll get one someday.
Also, I know the pain of searching for vintage VAIO drivers, my 2001 SR27 model with Windows ME seems to not exist anywhere
I wouldn't say useless. If you're in need of a small size portable terminal it might still serve well.
It's portable, it can start a Linux command line and you can use USB to serial. Don't know what they go for second hand, but it would be something I would be inclined to try
Small commandline tasks. Configuring switches, deploying embedded firmware, anything serial or network related. Not everything is Gui centered you know😮
Or just get one the GPD Win portable systems that are easier to find, and put Linux on it
@@CommodoreFan64 yes you could, but that is a rather useless comment. The question is: can this particular system still do something useful? The answer is: yes it can. Should you go look for one? Likely not, there are easier options. But again not the point. When someone gives you a second hand car, are you going to ask what it is good for? Tell them there are better cars available? I for one will just be happy and try to give it a useful purpose any way possible.
oh hey the vaio has quickboot, that uses a hidden partition on the disk to "instant boot" a very basic linux OS that has a webbrowser and some very basic media tools
you are not missing much, those were usually on vista laptops because laptops used to take over a minute to load vista thanks to slow harddrives and lots of bloatware, frustrating the end user
I will forever love tiny yet usable "laptops". Perhaps we now have the technology to actually make it work, looking at how much processing and rendering power is being crammed into flat thin tablets.
GMA500 has really bad linux support, so how the hell would you use that fastboot option for media playback?
I remember seeing the US version of this machine in Fry's Electronics in 2009, when I went there to buy a netbook. I had already pretty much decided on the cheap but decent Acer Aspire One (in blue!), which seemed to make all the right compromises to meet the price and size expectations of a netbook for me. Nonetheless, I took a look at Sony's offering and, even just trying it out in the store, I was left wondering who would buy such a thing. The Acer came with Windows XP pre-installed, which ran quite well on it and looked good on the small but bright screen Acer had chosen, and it seemed surprisingly speedy when opening office applications or browsing the web. The Sony, by contrast, had (as mentioned) Windows Vista, which slurped up all of the machine's limited resources just to, well, run Vista by itself, making opening any of the pre-installed applications or browsing the web glacially slow. Add to that the fact that 2009 was prime "everyone hates Vista" time, and the choice of OS by Sony was quite perplexing (even much more powerful laptops on display came with XP to satisfy customer demand!).
And, yeah, while the Acer's keyboard was reduced in size, it was still large enough to type neatly on and had a decent key action, while even leaving enough space for a small trackpad, while the Sony machine was awful to type on and felt much more cramped. About the only thing I remember liking about the Sony was just how clean and sharp the picture looked, as a static image, comparable to the beautiful screen they used in the PSP. However, a $900+ picture frame wasn't what I was there for, and the Acer was easier to use, more pleasant to use, had more resources leftover from the OS to run applications well, and even had a bigger (if cheaper) screen, all for about $300! Since I was buying a netbook as a travel machine, one that would be powerful enough to use for typing, email, and web browsing, with some light gaming, while traveling but still cheap enough that I wouldn't be paranoid about it being stolen from my hotel room, choosing the Acer was an easy choice.
The best I can say about Sony's little machine -- and so many others that they made in that era -- was that at least they tried to be different, and sometimes that's important for pushing the state of the art. Just... not this time.
02:41- Loving that "ASCIIQuarium" Terminal screensaver.
I have one of these too, the best upgrade you can do is stick a ssd in it and it makes it better on load times but yes its very slow for what it is and i think best os would be windows xp which should make it real snappy.
I remember wanting one of these so bad but got a regular sized netbook instead. I remember having to squint and struggle even those were larger and was glad I didn't get the viao. Still a net little device though.
I wanted one of these sooooo bad.
Still trying to find stuff like it especially now that phones are keyless.
These things are so rare and expensive it’s ridiculous for such hot garbage computers
i got one of those good videos i remember i received this as a birthday gift in 2009 it is frustrating to use till this day
Personally I loved mine, and still own it (and bought a second one in gold) though I don't use it as my main laptop anymore.
It was seriously flawed with its limited RAM and processor, but I did find once it had actually booted up properly it was fine for general use, and I found it very handy in College to type notes while also keeping my classroom desk space for papers and other items, while also being really easy to grab and take to the next class, was able to use the dongle to take advantage of ethernet, it even fit into my jacket pocket like the adverts loved to show.
Part of me wishes if VAIO hadn't been sold off that they'd have brought a newer and more capable version out using more up to date hardware when all the lightweight slim Intel laptops got a couple of generations upgrade, but the small screen did hold it back despite that dimension being its core design feature so it wouldn't sell that well in today's world of ever more capable tablets and decent spec lightweight laptops.
Also when my desktop's motherboard died, I ended up using it as my main desktop PC for a couple of months, despite lack of performance it still browsed just fine and when connected up to my monitor and tethered to wall power for max performance it did just fine, the only thing I really missed was not being able to game.
I wanted one of these so bad back in the day when I was always on the road, when I was going as small as I could when average laptops were so bulky at the time. They were just too expensive.
Speaking as someone who daily-drove Linux on one of these atom netbooks (a Dell one, but with similar specs to this Vaio) during the period, I can confidently say that Linux would not have improved the experience much. The GMA 500 chipset was licensed from PowerVR so Intel's open-source drivers don't work for it. The driver that does exist is barebones and written by a single guy. Even in the best case, you're looking at barely being able to hit 1366x768 on the desktop without any kind of hw-accelerated video playback and no 3D acceleration at all.
I have one of these! The SD card and Sony Memory Stick (uses Duo size) card slots can be simultaneously be used in a vain attempt to increase the amount of usable space. It is slow af tho as noted from the video and even if you booted into the crossmedia system, yeah, it's still just as laggy as it is on Windows.
I bought one of these when they were on the way out. Swapping out the spinning hard drive for flash memory made it significantly more useable. Since it uses the same hard drive type as classic iPods, I used a Compact Flash adapter with a CF card large enough to install Vista (probably 32 GB). But watching standard definition video required helping the processor stay cool with an external fan or spritzing the plastic shell of the computer with water. Not advised, but it was enough to get mine to play video without hitching.
Could get down with more mini laptops. I would love these today. Steam deck don't really cut it for me
XMB was also used in some Sony Bravia TVs at the time, One of the TVs in my house from 2010 also has a XMB UI.
I have a Sony Vaio PCG-21313M which was similar and comes with a Windows 7 key. I upgraded it to the x86 Debian Linux distribution from Raspberry Pi. It is fast and works well. All of the standard training software that you would find on a Raspberry Pi desktop is present.
I have the Sony VGN-P11Z, with 2 ghz cpu and 2 gb of ram. Taken to old hard drive out, and installed small ssd m.2 drive in its place. Managed to get a stripped down version of Windows 10 running on. The battery is very poor condition. But works great as a compact pc.
The vaio p series was fantastic! I wish that we could get more designs like this again. standard size/stripped down keyboard with trackpoint, display to match the size, nice and thin. but with a modern low power cpu, ddr5, wifi 6e, and modern lithium polymer battery.
Always a pleasure to listen to you. Wonderful to listen to you, your emphasis, the rhetoric. Found your channel once I was looking for some MiniDisc stuff.
I got a Sony Vaio laptop for college in 2005 and I loved it, but in retrospect, my parents paid far, far too much for something that became outdated so fast (and it couldn't play games all that well either, besides emulators, which admittedly was what I wanted to play on it lol). It was cool looking - a dark red color, I don't remember the model. I miss Vaios haha
The proper Vaio laptops were pretty consistent devices. My roommate in undergrad a few years later had a Vaio laptop (probably navy blue) and at one point actually had someone come out for on-site hardware support in our dorm.
@@THEmuteKi what the hell, you're from TT lol
I wonder if such a laptop can support an SSD drive to give him so extra fluidity
I use a Toshiba Netbook running AntiX Linux to run a network pi-hole. It's no beast of a system, but it's set it, forget it, and SSH into it when updates need to be checked for. And the pihole does amazingly well.
I remember going to Fry's Electronics and seeing the VAIO laptops and thinking how cool they looked and how far out of my price range they were. Thank God, because I probably would have bought on if they were a bit cheaper.
I have one which I bought secondhand around 14 years ago. The looks and quality was great. The reality was that the screen was too small for the high resolution, and the performance was dreadful with the native vista OS. Might boot it up for giggles, like my Libretto 50CT
Hey, please get your hands on SONY VAIO DUO 11 (or 13).
Extremely underrated, brilliant machines!
I own 1 (and couple more for scrap parts), and they still look futuristic and fast!
Only unfortunate part is the lack or RAM upgradability, also how expensive the spare parts prices are...
Seriously, check it out, you will love it!
I always enjoy your videos. I hope you are doing well and are in good health.
I loved my p2 400mhz version, but then ended up getting a nettbook. I could fit in my baggy jeans back pocket! You're making me want to go find it in storage! Man what a trip down memory lane!
I actually wanted one of these in 2010 but refrained because it was too expensive for just an Atom processor with 2GiB RAM. Watching this video, I was right.
Imagine if these were to be rebooted but using a modern AMD APU with hardware similar to the Steam Deck. Drop the resolution a bit for the smaller display so it's not "squinty", include a USB C Dock by default to use at the desk, and you got yourself a really sweet UMPC that's capable of being a daily driver especially when used at a desk. Need a bigger screen? USB-C lapdock. It'd be a very versatile little machine for sure!
I love my Steam Deck as my primary PC, I just wish I could keep it in my pocket while out!
Also, I remember seeing a Vaio P at Fry's back in the day in person, I noticed it was using the "Vista/7 Basic" theme, I went to enable Aero, and I noticed it just couldn't even carry the weight of the OS alone in all it's glory. Beautiful handheld, garbage chipset.
the materials and colours in these Vaios attract me. love to see them
colors**
I had this! Quite useful and I really wanna keep it, sadly even though it's outdated after 5 years, the company policy needs it returned anyway
2:41 where can i get this screensaver?
I had one of these and also the UX. Loved both but plagued by seemingly poor hardware choices. While the UX had a dual core CPU, it only had 1GB MAX of ram. The P I had was a single core CPU with 2GB of ram, but its performance was so bad. Ended up selling both because neither were useable.
I had a Sony TR series laptop and loved it. I even did the mod on it to add Bluetooth and upgraded the 1.8” drive to a higher capacity.
I had a Fujitsu Lifebook U810 as my primary computer for about a year and a half - which is almost impossible to believe when I look back. Weird old Intel A110 CPU, slow 4200 rpm 1.8" drive, and came with Vista installed, which made it basically useless too. Remarkably similar machines. No idea how I used one for so long.
My dad owned Windows ME based small Sony VAIO Laptops and man that thing sucked with ME on it. It blue screened majority of the time. When he upgraded it to Windows 2000 it really made a difference.
These were a joy to type on but were unfortunately held back by the battery life and slow hardware, especially for the cheapest P11Z model. Loved the form factor though.
I hope sony would bring this line again I love so much and with a more capable hardware this time it would be really good
time for things like this to make a come back. with newer hardware they'd be awesome. I miss having a netbook.
spent a lot on a vaio tx, was a wonderful small machine. Used it as main pc until my wrists hurt ;) motherboard died, cost a fortune to repair (like 1500us), it died again and no warranty. Gave up on vaio after that.
Acer and Asus did so much better with their netbooks. The extra weight and bulk was worth the performance and potential to upgrade. My Acer Aspire One's new aftermarket battery is ridiculous and sticks out the back, but the 15 year old machine still works just fine, fast enough for low end Linux computing.
Had someone drop a bunch of old computers off at the store I work at saying we could do what we want with them. Most of them were ancient junk but one of these was in the pile (VGN-P15G). I love computing oddities and couldn't let the thing go to e-waste so kept it. Such a unique little machine that I figured I could find some use for and had pretty much forgotten about it until this video popped up on my recommended.
I actually bought one of these new when they came out. (US model) It was horrible for most uses, screen lagged if you tried to watch videos, I ended up using it for a tuner for my car (megasquirt) which it was amazing for, until a friend stepped on it and broke the screen. At that time it was not worth trying to replace. Was a cool idea but i have never been able to use the eraser style mouse lol
Funny enough, I had the UX series as well later, same thing, quite useless but worked great for a tuner, infact I believe my friend still has it (honestly the UX ran better)
6:15 this kinda reminds me of Windows media player. That was a resource hog, too. Since this app was designed to work with the button, it probably booted into a ,,minimal configuration,, mode where only crutial components were used to keep the experience smoother
Tou know you can open up software on the recovery disk and install them in windows. You can also right click on the device you want to install then browse the cd for the driver. So if its the wrong disk but has the same drivers you can use just the drivers off disk you can also unpack the iso to get any of the pre installed software off the disk. If you cant find any restore disks you can remove the hard drive and install the drivers off the original disk by browsing for them from the original install. You dont need a driver installer you just need the driver files. You can use the windows device manager to install drivers. Before you restore a computer dump the device folder from the original install on a flash drive that will also work.
I saw a similar video from someone else, but these look really good! Looks like a computer for a business.