As a former VAIO enthusiast, I can add that the scroll wheel was actually a SONY VAIO exclusive feature they called the “Jog Dial”. It was actually something of an app launcher. Had its own UI that launched on top of windows. The idea was to provide quick access to a handful of apps on top of your windows session, without having to go into the Start menu. The dials were located on the side in many early VAIO models, but they moved it below the touchpad for this SRX model. If you look at earlier models like the VAIO SR, Z505, C1 or N505 you’ll find the wheel on the right hand side of the laptop. I don’t specifically recall of the jog wheel could double as a scroll wheel for browsers, but the reason for the back button is to be able to back out of a selection made by clicking on the wheel. It was a really fun feature that they eventually ported to the CLIÉ line of Palm OS devices too, before getting rid of them towards the end of VAIO line up, somewhere around windows Vista and 7.
why former? VAIO still makes laptops. it's just not sony anymore. they still seem to make mini powerhouse machines. even their newest laptop has an entire side of the laptop just jam packed with connectivity
Well, the jogdial thing is pretty much like a Sony implementation of what they used in their consumer electronics for years. I can totally give them props for the UI, but it’s also implemented as a bit of bloatware on their system images. It’s cute when it’s on a SX or SZ series Pentium M machine with plenty of RAM - it’s hell when it’s running on an older SR9K with 192MB of RAM on expensive microDIMMs and a slow hard drive.
they lost quite a bit of loyal customers in the mid-2010s with some really mediocre, boring, run-of-the-mill designs. Their old machines like the Picturebooks, 505s, SRs or the U/UX were known for being avant-garde and innovative machines that you lust over on Japanese subnotebook importers from back in the days. Towards the end of Sony Vaio it’s a long series of overpriced big all-in-one slabs or Atom netbooks that were only known for different color options. Or your system image had all those terrible bloatware meant to “optimize” the machine for the Experias, Bravias, PS3s, ATRAC3/NetMD, or whatever the executives at Sony want to push for their “synergy” cross-promotional agenda. Its successor organizatio might have a few winners in the SX12/14s, but they certainly don’t have the geek mindshare of something like the LG Gram or the Framework, much less the horde of oat-milk latte swilling tech bros and their Macbook Pros. They just lost their cool over time.
@@JessicaFEREM I have nothing against modern VAIO computers but I guess I don't obsessively follow them or read every reviews like I use to in the early 2000s. My VAIO fandom hit its peak when I was finally able to get my parents to buy me a Z1 for college. I remember being so happy to have that 14" screen with SXGA+ resolution. And then they came out with the X505 and I wished I had waited a bit more, even though the Z1 was faster and more appropriate for my needs... (I did get an X505 on eBay after I got my first job). But yea the last VAIO model I bought for myself was a Flip 15. That thing was really cool. Like a Surface Laptop Studio but way earlier. Now I have an M1 MacBook Air, which I like, but I kind of wish I could transplant its guts into the body of my X505... But yea I don't hate VAIO, but I'm definitely no longer "enthusiastic" about their latest offerings :)
@@Waaaaaaaaaaaang That doesn't sound like fun :( I do remember playing with the jog dial with a display model VAIO SR and thinking it was the coolest thing ever. Guess it was more about looking good on the showroom! My first VAIO was a Z1 and by then they had phased out the jog dial. I remember being bummed out that I missed out on them but I guess I didn't miss much!
Considering all of the products they made, they were probably running out of different combinations of letters and numbers. Maybe time to look into Greek?
They still do. The WH-1000XM4 being their flagship headphones and the WF-1000XM3 being their flagship true wireless in ears. The WI series is for neckband style earphones
This is the first notebook I ever bought, and still have it today. Replaced the drive with a 160GB Seagate, and brought it up to 384MB of RAM. With some judicious pruning of unwanted and unnecessary applications and services, this is actually still a fairly peppy machine. I keep it around for "just in case" I need to run something from the early aughties.
My 13-14 year old self wanted one of these so bad! Could never afford one though and settled for an sr17 at about 1/3 the cost. I still drooled over this machine every time I went to compusa though!
My mom bought me one of these brand new from Best Buy circa 2002 or 3. I was obsessed with tiny electronics (Nokia 8390, Samsung SGH-A310, etc), and I absolutely loved the small form factor. I was the envy of all my nerdy college friends. As I recall, the VAIO lasted about 3 years before I replaced it. Thanks for the fond memories.
How weird to see these early 2000s machines. I worked at a Gateway store in 2002 as an instructor (yes, they had classes for customers who had never used a computer before) and I seem to recall that they also sold Sony products as well.
For future reference, if you have a laptop you need to wipe BUT it has all the drivers installed, there ARE third party tools that will allow you to backup ALL installed drivers into a single folder, thus allowing you to backup drivers, then just point your driver installer to that folder, post-reinstall, and install your drivers. I've used a few in the past during my career in IT, and have found them to extremely useful, especially for older systems where the manufacturers websites are now defunct.
I recently came into possession of a fully-functioning PCG-6G4L from about 2005 running XP-SP2 with the full suite of VIAO software. The default RAM is also 256MB, but I was able to stick a newer 2GB SODIMM into the expansion slot with zero issue. Although it runs a little hot, the single core Pentium-M 740 boosts up to 1733mhz and it has a discrete GeForce Go 6200 with 32MB VRAM paired with a 1200x800 60hz display. The only thing I can't get to work is the built-in MoGo bluetooth mouse as this laptop not only has integrated wifi but also bluetooth as well. The 80GB SATA1 hard disk seems to be in good health and it boots to desktop in about 30 seconds. I haven't tried to yet, but it seems like it would be great for retro XP gaming.
I'd get a cheap 256GB SSD for that machine, since it has SATA. It will obviously be restricted to maximum sustained speeds of about 150MB/s or so, as it's SATA1, but the random reads and writes will be much faster and will feel more snappy overall.
I bought my wife a pink Sony VAIO over 10 years ago and it still runs amazing. I have upgraded the hard drive to SSD and increased the RAM. Only other thing I thought about is changing the CPU to i7 has i3 now. Yes back when you could just turn a little screw and out comes the CPU on a laptop. Most new laptops it is soldered directly to the motherboard.
@@theforerunnerreclaimer depends on TDP. Sandy Bridge i3s were all 35w. i7s were both 35 and 45w, however the 35w ones were dual core only. You had to knock up to 45w. Regardless I don't think he'll have an issue. I've thrown a 45w i7 in a Samsung NP300 and it's fine, and Samsung never even made an i7 sku of that machine.
I bought this week two Vaio P, the first and the second generation. These are some weird but amazing and interesting computers. Thanks for this video! Didn’t knew about these.
You might want to keep an eye out for the "blink of death", which is a common occurrence for Sony Vaio PCG-SRs and early ThinkPad A/T2x series machines with Mobile Pentium IIIs. Those machines will simply not boot but blink and not start up. They both use the Analog Devices ADP3421 and those are known to fail over time (sometimes within 6 years of service). Later machines in the series (the X2x and the ThinkPad T23) do not use that chip, and the same goes for later Vaio PCG-SR machines. It might not impact your machine, but it's something to be aware of on old P3 mobile laptops from that era.
@@youtubeisgarbage900 And what makes you think there is an actual, workable solution to a problem that hasn't been tried for the past 14 years? The ADP3421 chip is EOL and will degrade over time, there's no drop-in substitute, and any chip that you can buy nowadays is new old source/will likely be dead or dying, replacing the chip requires SMT soldering skills, and even if you solder it in, there's no guarantee it'll work. if the ADP3421's power-good logic is still at an early age of degradation, putting a 2.2kOhm resistor between pin 16 and 24 "might" make the power sense logic function again, but once again, not guaranteed to work, and once the chip goes beyond a certain point the resistor won't do it anyways.
@@youtubeisgarbage900 mate, i kind of understand the sentiment that you're trying to convey, but what are you even talking about? First of all, that guys' initial comment was very informative, as not many people are aware of issues that plague older laptops, especially the ones that are considered "good old reliable" (yes, i'm talking Thinkpads), so i wouldn't call it complaining. Second of all, chips can't be just "easily fabbed up from scratch" if you want to create a worthy replacement for the part that you need to replace: it takes extensive testing, prototyping and labour to do that sort of work. All of that takes money, for which most likely won't see any returns. Finally, who are "we" and what exactly are "we" doing IRL and in the tech industry? There is an insane amount of development going on every day so i think that something is definitely getting done. I understand that my response might come off as snarky, but i just couldn't keep myself from responding.
@@youtubeisgarbage900 Oh, and what useful contribution to society or the tech industry have you committed upon lately? What evidence do you have that fabricating an Intel Geyserville power management controller is "EASY" or "CAN BE FABBED UP FROM SCRATCH", or for that matter "CAN BE DONE AT A REASONABLE PRICE TODAY AND SUITABLE FOR A 22 YEAR OLD LAPTOP"? I have yet to see any indications that a) You actually have one of those affected machines in question b) you actually did any research to the cause of the problem or c) you actually proposed possible mitigations. And what made you think that I put no effort into solving this? Are you one of those overprivileged millennials with no skin in the game who expect someone else to solve a problem and then gloat when no one hear your whining? Pathetic.
I own the Sony Vaio PCG-C1VN, the Vaio Picturebook, its a Toshiba Libretto look-a-like, but with better features and a webcam build in! That is insane! I bought this thing for 20 euro's, the previous owner said it didn't work anymore, but there is a rechargeable backup battery in it, and if you leave it plugged in long enough, it will just boot up, this battery is critical to that machine, so i want to replace it someday, because it started to leak, but it still works fine, its a rare lil machine and i was amazed i found it for that cheap! I had to resolder the connector though because it came off the board while removing it.
I came to the Vaio series in mid 2007. It was clear that regardless of many people's thoughts venders were pushing Vista. I managed to snag the last floor model of a Sony VAIO with XP, a 80 gig HDD, 512 meg of RAM. It had a modem and wifi; the wifi was controlled by a switch on the lower right of the laptop. It was a very faithful box. I had many reinstalls of XP and Vista, and eventually 7. It also handled Ubuntu 10.4 fairly well. Like many laptops, this one died because the power terminal inside the unit got munged up so bad, and the HDD was also failing. So at least I got like two very good years from that machine. Almost three. I miss that machine. I went through three or four great machines in only a few years. This one I still remember pretty fondly. I was pretty rough with it but it was ready to roll again.
I can use a track pad very well, but always miss having a scroll wheel for games. I would love to see more scroll wheels on laptops. I remember looking at a Sony like this at Best Buy that was a PIII 800 MHz for college. I think that Sony had a docking station. I ended up getting a VPR Matrix 200A5, which was a great laptop that unfortunately constantly broke down.
Older Sony Vaio stuff is hard to find because the people that could afford it back in the day threw it away when the next best one came out. I have had friends tell me this when they were growing up their parents would toss an old laptop and he would get it back out of the garbage and store it, only if they still worked. He now has the biggest Vaio collection I have ever seen. Thanks for the video Collin and have a nice day.
I hate how Sony forced its consumers to use two peripherals that were already DoA. Memory sticks started to die and wain after SD Cards and micro SD cards were coming into fruition which could hold more data while also being more accessible.
I found an old Vaio, VGN something or other, I think it's smaller than this one runs XP has wireless, widescreen mode, and a DVD drive. I love it so much! Sony was really an unsung hero back in the day.
I think I have the exact same or a very similar one just like it. My Mom used to use it, and she says it impressed her coworkers. I actually have most, if not all of the stuff it came with.
Sony Vaio had much better design than most netbooks, I wish most netbooks were like Sony’s laptops, because they have features and try to distinguish themselves than those watered down netbooks from the late-2000s that were so unreliable!
Oh wow. I have a Vaio TR. It's the same idea - little 10.6 inch display, but high end specs and not for a cheap cost. It even packs a DVD drive, and uses a 1.8" HDD to save space, as well as using those proprietary Sony MicroDIMMs.
Sony used that external screen lock quite a few times - the PCG-QR line used it and so did the much later VGN-FE line. The SRX line is quite neat, but the hinges do seem to be quite weak in my experience.
That Sony VAIO styling 👌 Another useful tip for drivers (in general) is the tool Snappy Driver Installer. Not sure how effective it is with VAIO hardware, but worth a shot!
@@j_r_- No, actually it doesn't have any viruses and every computer I repair or build I'm using SDI because it's (almost) guaranteed to install every driver for every component. Why I'm saying it's "almost" guaranteed? Because usually installing Synaptics drivers through SDI is clunky, and there was a problem to install a proper GeForce Go 6150 driver for HP Pavilion TX1000 on Windows 10, because it bluescreened whenever you rotated the screen into tablet mode. Other than that, it does successfully install drivers on a new desktop hardware and even on things like my good old IBM ThinkPad T43 :)
I think Sony didn't use the 6-pin Firewire connector because the CD/DVD drives have different power requirements than what the standard provided and it was intended for external optical drives. The Sony VAIO Firewire DVD drive I have is 10V at 1.5A. Looks like Firewire is about 12V but only at 0.6A per port. I have a Japanese SRX7E. It's pretty nice and more usable than the even smaller C1 PictureBooks. There's a 11n compatible WiFi PC Card with XP drivers I picked up so I don't need to use an ethernet cable to get it online. Sony VAIOs from the early 2000s are the most interesting PCs as they had both style and unique features compared to what other PC manufacturers were doing at the time.
had a similar vaio older model that didn't have built in wifi- However, had it been 6 months newer I would have still had it in use for all my dvds just for fun (external dvd required). 2 gb memory, nice and small - even the tsa at the airport couldn't believe it was a working computer... had to turn it on to prove it to them. but sadly the battery has permanently died. after all these years.. fortunately I had finally retrieved my photos from it. - it is unfortunate that they were always so pricey. had it been more consumer friendly it would have been easily a favorite model. Had some old games that were totally fun to play too. I still have it, just an expensive paperweight now. but it held a "cozy" memories for me, so haven't trashed it.
Selling off the Laptop brand was one of the biggest Mistakes Sony did. Imagine how they could have pushed Blu-ray by adding BD-R drives as standard optical drives to their laptops while everyone else was only adding DVD drives. Even the band Kraftwerk relied on Sony VAIO Laptops during their live Shows in the early 2000s. THAT was their mobile Kling Klang studio that they carried with them.
Netbooks drove Sony nuts. We were selling these little Viaos the lawyers and businessmen for a couple of grand and along comes netbooks for literally 1/10 the price
oohh I've seen that one in the early 2000s in a local store and wanted it so bad because of how small it was, but of course it was WAAAAY over our budget and our family didn't really had the need for a laptop until 2004 when we got two Acer Travelmate 290 with Pentium M and Windows XP, but they were 15 inch.
The voltage on the 6 pin port is the reason it's not advisable to hot plug firewire. Most camcorders use 4pin, so a 4pin to 6-pin cable could ruin overload your camera's firewire controller and destroy it's ability to transfer data.
I have one of those notebooks and the external cable and drive, no hard drive. I will have to see if I can dig them out later tonight. If I find them they are yours if you want.
I get Action Retro vibes from this with that wavy hand. I always liked computers where engineers' only limits where the technology available at the time.
In the early 2000s I had a compaq with a usb wifi card, I wanted one of these VAIO machines so badly it hurt. Back then Myspace had just launched, Torrents were exploding onto the scene, and IRC and forums were the most popular places to communicate and share memes (though they weren't called that back then). It was a much simpler time and I miss it.
Just a small correction - that video out is a Mini-VGA connector. It's not particularly proprietary - it was just rare to come by. I believe that some Apple iBooks of that era also used the same connector for video out.
These older machinese usually had excellent keyboards. I prefer these types of keyboards for programming over most of the machines that are on the market today. These machines also can take quiet a beating and nothing will break, while some of the new laptops, especially ultra books, can't take much abuse at all. Different times.
I've got an Asus EEE PC 1000H and my Asus E14KA will arrive tomorrow. I'm interested in seeing the progress made. The Intel Celeron N4500 isn't a beast but it can play some modern games which is just wild to me, seeing as the Intel Atom N270 struggles with even the simplest of games. I love these little machines and the new Asus I got seems really appealing for the price. Only downside will be the screen I think, but if the rest is nice, I won't complain 😁
Would love to maybe see the Asus E410 on here, even if it's too now for this channel. There's barely any information or reviews online and it does compare to a Netbook in size, so it might still fit here!
@@user-yi3ox8wy4k Yeah, it was neat. Still running well for me with Windows 7, even playing some games like Half Life. But unfortunately it's too limited now, with only 32 bit support, 2 GB of RAM and just a single wimpy core 😓
Oh, this looks like a rather fun device to play with. And if it actually has some power, it might be not as much of a pain to try and use as netbooks are, now.
Colin, I could listen to you talk about Sony stuff of any type all day long. Wonder if you'll ever look at the PEG-UX50? It was superpowered PDA back in the day, and I've always wanted one. Would love to hear your thoughts on it. Great job with the video!
tbh i have tons of retro laptops and none of them come with the recovery image, I just use aida64, hwinfo and the windows device manager to check all components and the hardware ids/current driver version to have a "known good/working" version and make backups of everything so if I need I could just get the .inf files along with the .dll and such of the specific driver and use that one if I cant find any online. I thought this was how ppl did this stuff by default lmao, never been fortunate enough to find recovery disks or partitions or whatnot, I get them from a local 2nd hand store that sells them as is and half of them are e-waste but I love to tinker w them tbh. Im jealous of this one tho it looks super cool I love how the display has that weird glass/plastic frame like a Nintendo ds kinda? its a neat device indeed
As a long time Apple computer owner I am so glad Apple never attaches stickers to computers advertising the installed OS or the Intel Inside stickers. These stickers detract from the look of the computer. Sometimes the Wintel computers were actually well designed. The stickers looked tacky.
Sony always loved their proprietary connectors and such, didn't they? Oooh, having a scroll wheel and back button by the touchpad is a damn cool idea, though. I kinda wish my Vista-era Acer laptop had those!
hi, about that sony 8mm vcr, you should try the fingernail trick and not alchohol because the 8mm tape is metal, dissasemble the unit so you can se video drum, insert a tape and press play, while the drum is spinning put surface of your fingernail on part of the drum above the tape, it helped me a lot of times where i had no picture and after i did this it showed the picture, dont worry you are not going to damage the drum because it is more durable then a human fingernail
I got one of these for free a couple years ago. but it had been dropped and smashed up. Screen is good, but it won't boot... not sure if its worth trying to fix, but it sure is a cool size!
I had a Vaio as a work laptop and had to wipe and reformat the drive. Unfortunately, the CD ROM died during the reformat. I was able to get an early version of Ubuntu loaded and it went to another technician to use afterwards. It was a pretty nice laptop apart from the drive dying.
When I listen to you I feel like it's Ben Folds behind the camera - taking a break from making music. Y'all sound very similar. Sony made some really neat "almost netbook" laptops back in the day like the UX Micro PC or the VAIO P. It's crazy to think how far we've come from the killer Pentium III and 20GB HDD days!
I don’t understand the relation to netbooks in this video at all. Netbooks weren’t a thing for another decade, and were made for a totally different market. This was a sub-notebook. There were laptops, and notebooks, and sub-notebooks. It wasn’t gimped like a netbook, it was just optimized for portability. I had an R505 back then, also a mobile Pentium III-based machine with many of the same design characteristics - 384MB RAM limit, the same I/O but all standard plugs, nice large responsive touch pad with Jog Dial, etc. It came with a docking “media bay” that would add CD-RW/DVD and floppy drives, and had a port replicator-style back panel with all the I/O. It could run while on battery if you needed drives on the go and didn’t mind the form factor of a typical more chonky laptop. But then you could just pop it right back off and go slim again. There wasn’t anything “netbook” about that computer. This wasn’t Sony “not cheaping out” with full resolution panels and contemporary processors, it was just a very slim and portable laptop, competing with full notebooks, but smaller. They crammed as much as could reasonably fit and function in the space, and I adored that computer. I drove it straight into the ground over years of use. Played games on it too, even with the Intel IGP. Unreal Tournament and Myst III - Exile ran gr- eh, good enough.
The VAIO line of computer always looked to me very expensive, just how much did that thing cost when new? That proprietary power connector is the same Sony used in their video cameras? It look like a nice addition to your collection, if price is right I wouldn't mind having one and the fact that is a PIII is a plus to me. Thanks for the video!
*¡pondering and wondering on purchasing either a Samsung notebook computer or an Apple notebook computer!* - 9:27 pm Pacific Standard Time on Thursday, 27 January 2022
I once had a Sony Vaio notebook, inherited from my dad, and was cured of them after that. I more gladly used the Gericom i had before that, more stable, more servicable and not with that pesky glossy LCD.
Hello, I used a translator. Please, I need the PCG-SRX77 drivers (windows xp) to control the brightness of the screen. I have searched but haven't found them. Thanks.
I could be wrong but I think that display out looks a lot like mini-VGA? iBook G4s iMac G4 and eMac used it I think, a precursor to mini-DVI and then mini-DisplayPort 🙂
I have one that looks the same but has a slower CPU. I ran into problems to clean install WindowsXP because I didn't have a valid key. I ended up installing Windows98SE on it. I was able to find all drivers so that there was no unknown devices in the device manager, although it took a while to locate all the drivers for Windows98. I wonder how people deal with the license keys for legacy OSs. Also, it seems only small size memory stick models are supported, like 64MB. I got an adapter for later memory stick models (DUO?), but it doesn't recognize it.
As a former VAIO enthusiast, I can add that the scroll wheel was actually a SONY VAIO exclusive feature they called the “Jog Dial”. It was actually something of an app launcher. Had its own UI that launched on top of windows. The idea was to provide quick access to a handful of apps on top of your windows session, without having to go into the Start menu. The dials were located on the side in many early VAIO models, but they moved it below the touchpad for this SRX model. If you look at earlier models like the VAIO SR, Z505, C1 or N505 you’ll find the wheel on the right hand side of the laptop. I don’t specifically recall of the jog wheel could double as a scroll wheel for browsers, but the reason for the back button is to be able to back out of a selection made by clicking on the wheel. It was a really fun feature that they eventually ported to the CLIÉ line of Palm OS devices too, before getting rid of them towards the end of VAIO line up, somewhere around windows Vista and 7.
why former? VAIO still makes laptops. it's just not sony anymore.
they still seem to make mini powerhouse machines.
even their newest laptop has an entire side of the laptop just jam packed with connectivity
Well, the jogdial thing is pretty much like a Sony implementation of what they used in their consumer electronics for years. I can totally give them props for the UI, but it’s also implemented as a bit of bloatware on their system images. It’s cute when it’s on a SX or SZ series Pentium M machine with plenty of RAM - it’s hell when it’s running on an older SR9K with 192MB of RAM on expensive microDIMMs and a slow hard drive.
they lost quite a bit of loyal customers in the mid-2010s with some really mediocre, boring, run-of-the-mill designs. Their old machines like the Picturebooks, 505s, SRs or the U/UX were known for being avant-garde and innovative machines that you lust over on Japanese subnotebook importers from back in the days. Towards the end of Sony Vaio it’s a long series of overpriced big all-in-one slabs or Atom netbooks that were only known for different color options. Or your system image had all those terrible bloatware meant to “optimize” the machine for the Experias, Bravias, PS3s, ATRAC3/NetMD, or whatever the executives at Sony want to push for their “synergy” cross-promotional agenda. Its successor organizatio might have a few winners in the SX12/14s, but they certainly don’t have the geek mindshare of something like the LG Gram or the Framework, much less the horde of oat-milk latte swilling tech bros and their Macbook Pros. They just lost their cool over time.
@@JessicaFEREM I have nothing against modern VAIO computers but I guess I don't obsessively follow them or read every reviews like I use to in the early 2000s. My VAIO fandom hit its peak when I was finally able to get my parents to buy me a Z1 for college. I remember being so happy to have that 14" screen with SXGA+ resolution. And then they came out with the X505 and I wished I had waited a bit more, even though the Z1 was faster and more appropriate for my needs... (I did get an X505 on eBay after I got my first job). But yea the last VAIO model I bought for myself was a Flip 15. That thing was really cool. Like a Surface Laptop Studio but way earlier. Now I have an M1 MacBook Air, which I like, but I kind of wish I could transplant its guts into the body of my X505... But yea I don't hate VAIO, but I'm definitely no longer "enthusiastic" about their latest offerings :)
@@Waaaaaaaaaaaang That doesn't sound like fun :( I do remember playing with the jog dial with a display model VAIO SR and thinking it was the coolest thing ever. Guess it was more about looking good on the showroom! My first VAIO was a Z1 and by then they had phased out the jog dial. I remember being bummed out that I missed out on them but I guess I didn't miss much!
Sony sure had a knack for model numbers that roll off the tongue so easily! 🙂
Considering all of the products they made, they were probably running out of different combinations of letters and numbers. Maybe time to look into Greek?
It's part of Sony's tradition :P
They still do. The WH-1000XM4 being their flagship headphones and the WF-1000XM3 being their flagship true wireless in ears. The WI series is for neckband style earphones
Not only did this laptop have a fantastic model number, it had two! PCG-SRX87 on top, and PCG-461L on the bottom
@@donnierussellii4659 they already started using roman numerals like xperia 1, 1ii , 1iii
This is the first notebook I ever bought, and still have it today.
Replaced the drive with a 160GB Seagate, and brought it up to 384MB of RAM. With some judicious pruning of unwanted and unnecessary applications and services, this is actually still a fairly peppy machine.
I keep it around for "just in case" I need to run something from the early aughties.
My 13-14 year old self wanted one of these so bad! Could never afford one though and settled for an sr17 at about 1/3 the cost. I still drooled over this machine every time I went to compusa though!
That scroll wheel and back button combo is relatively ingenious on Sony's part.
That proprietary video connector looks like a Mini-VGA, Apple used it too on some iBooks.
Yeah, its the same port on the SnowWhite iBooks
VAIO hardware was always pretty nice back in the day. It did come at a price premium though.
Vaio still exists, it's just vaio now, and series s, x and z only
@@idtyu Yup they are owned by Japan Industrial Partners, Inc. So it is still Japanese company, not chinese thank God!
@@allentoyokawa9068 I mean the biggest pc manufacturer is Chinese, and Lenovo seems to be doing great.
@@idtyu They make nothing but junk, and they maybe doing fine because the chinese buy them up... btw they are NOT the biggest manufacturer.
Sony mini laptops were really desirable. i really wanted one back in the day, and would always check them out when i saw them in a shop
My mom bought me one of these brand new from Best Buy circa 2002 or 3. I was obsessed with tiny electronics (Nokia 8390, Samsung SGH-A310, etc), and I absolutely loved the small form factor. I was the envy of all my nerdy college friends. As I recall, the VAIO lasted about 3 years before I replaced it. Thanks for the fond memories.
How weird to see these early 2000s machines. I worked at a Gateway store in 2002 as an instructor (yes, they had classes for customers who had never used a computer before) and I seem to recall that they also sold Sony products as well.
For future reference, if you have a laptop you need to wipe BUT it has all the drivers installed, there ARE third party tools that will allow you to backup ALL installed drivers into a single folder, thus allowing you to backup drivers, then just point your driver installer to that folder, post-reinstall, and install your drivers. I've used a few in the past during my career in IT, and have found them to extremely useful, especially for older systems where the manufacturers websites are now defunct.
I think one of those was called Driver Magician or something. I used that to backup at least the LAN and Wi-Fi drivers.
I recently came into possession of a fully-functioning PCG-6G4L from about 2005 running XP-SP2 with the full suite of VIAO software. The default RAM is also 256MB, but I was able to stick a newer 2GB SODIMM into the expansion slot with zero issue. Although it runs a little hot, the single core Pentium-M 740 boosts up to 1733mhz and it has a discrete GeForce Go 6200 with 32MB VRAM paired with a 1200x800 60hz display. The only thing I can't get to work is the built-in MoGo bluetooth mouse as this laptop not only has integrated wifi but also bluetooth as well. The 80GB SATA1 hard disk seems to be in good health and it boots to desktop in about 30 seconds. I haven't tried to yet, but it seems like it would be great for retro XP gaming.
I'd get a cheap 256GB SSD for that machine, since it has SATA. It will obviously be restricted to maximum sustained speeds of about 150MB/s or so, as it's SATA1, but the random reads and writes will be much faster and will feel more snappy overall.
I bought my wife a pink Sony VAIO over 10 years ago and it still runs amazing. I have upgraded the hard drive to SSD and increased the RAM. Only other thing I thought about is changing the CPU to i7 has i3 now. Yes back when you could just turn a little screw and out comes the CPU on a laptop. Most new laptops it is soldered directly to the motherboard.
Well if the cooling is built for a i3 the i7 might throttle
@@theforerunnerreclaimer the model had options for i5 and i7 if it needs i7 cooler should be able to install it since it was an option for that model
@@theforerunnerreclaimer depends on TDP. Sandy Bridge i3s were all 35w. i7s were both 35 and 45w, however the 35w ones were dual core only. You had to knock up to 45w. Regardless I don't think he'll have an issue. I've thrown a 45w i7 in a Samsung NP300 and it's fine, and Samsung never even made an i7 sku of that machine.
I bought this week two Vaio P, the first and the second generation. These are some weird but amazing and interesting computers. Thanks for this video! Didn’t knew about these.
What better way to chill out on a Friday night than watch one of Colin's fascinating videos such as this one? 😎
It's so cool that your last name really is Howsitgoing. Would never have guessed that.
You might want to keep an eye out for the "blink of death", which is a common occurrence for Sony Vaio PCG-SRs and early ThinkPad A/T2x series machines with Mobile Pentium IIIs. Those machines will simply not boot but blink and not start up. They both use the Analog Devices ADP3421 and those are known to fail over time (sometimes within 6 years of service). Later machines in the series (the X2x and the ThinkPad T23) do not use that chip, and the same goes for later Vaio PCG-SR machines. It might not impact your machine, but it's something to be aware of on old P3 mobile laptops from that era.
This. So much this. I cannot count the number of Thinkpad T models I have had this happen with, particularly the 22, 23 and 30.
@@youtubeisgarbage900 And what makes you think there is an actual, workable solution to a problem that hasn't been tried for the past 14 years? The ADP3421 chip is EOL and will degrade over time, there's no drop-in substitute, and any chip that you can buy nowadays is new old source/will likely be dead or dying, replacing the chip requires SMT soldering skills, and even if you solder it in, there's no guarantee it'll work. if the ADP3421's power-good logic is still at an early age of degradation, putting a 2.2kOhm resistor between pin 16 and 24 "might" make the power sense logic function again, but once again, not guaranteed to work, and once the chip goes beyond a certain point the resistor won't do it anyways.
@@shakymctwitch8615 well, the blink-of-death doesn't impact the 23 or the 30, but they have other issues like the SODIMM slots failing and whatnot.
@@youtubeisgarbage900 mate, i kind of understand the sentiment that you're trying to convey, but what are you even talking about? First of all, that guys' initial comment was very informative, as not many people are aware of issues that plague older laptops, especially the ones that are considered "good old reliable" (yes, i'm talking Thinkpads), so i wouldn't call it complaining. Second of all, chips can't be just "easily fabbed up from scratch" if you want to create a worthy replacement for the part that you need to replace: it takes extensive testing, prototyping and labour to do that sort of work. All of that takes money, for which most likely won't see any returns. Finally, who are "we" and what exactly are "we" doing IRL and in the tech industry? There is an insane amount of development going on every day so i think that something is definitely getting done. I understand that my response might come off as snarky, but i just couldn't keep myself from responding.
@@youtubeisgarbage900 Oh, and what useful contribution to society or the tech industry have you committed upon lately? What evidence do you have that fabricating an Intel Geyserville power management controller is "EASY" or "CAN BE FABBED UP FROM SCRATCH", or for that matter "CAN BE DONE AT A REASONABLE PRICE TODAY AND SUITABLE FOR A 22 YEAR OLD LAPTOP"? I have yet to see any indications that a) You actually have one of those affected machines in question b) you actually did any research to the cause of the problem or c) you actually proposed possible mitigations. And what made you think that I put no effort into solving this? Are you one of those overprivileged millennials with no skin in the game who expect someone else to solve a problem and then gloat when no one hear your whining? Pathetic.
Double driver is what you need my friend. It won't help you with the special viao utilities but it can extract basic drivers from an existing install.
I remember my dad's friend had one of these he'd use to bootleg music back in the 2000s idk why I remember this so vividly but I do
I own the Sony Vaio PCG-C1VN, the Vaio Picturebook, its a Toshiba Libretto look-a-like, but with better features and a webcam build in! That is insane! I bought this thing for 20 euro's, the previous owner said it didn't work anymore, but there is a rechargeable backup battery in it, and if you leave it plugged in long enough, it will just boot up, this battery is critical to that machine, so i want to replace it someday, because it started to leak, but it still works fine, its a rare lil machine and i was amazed i found it for that cheap! I had to resolder the connector though because it came off the board while removing it.
I came to the Vaio series in mid 2007. It was clear that regardless of many people's thoughts venders were pushing Vista. I managed to snag the last floor model of a Sony VAIO with XP, a 80 gig HDD, 512 meg of RAM. It had a modem and wifi; the wifi was controlled by a switch on the lower right of the laptop.
It was a very faithful box. I had many reinstalls of XP and Vista, and eventually 7. It also handled Ubuntu 10.4 fairly well. Like many laptops, this one died because the power terminal inside the unit got munged up so bad, and the HDD was also failing. So at least I got like two very good years from that machine. Almost three.
I miss that machine. I went through three or four great machines in only a few years. This one I still remember pretty fondly. I was pretty rough with it but it was ready to roll again.
I had this laptop years and years ago in Japan. It was nice to see it again in this video.
I can use a track pad very well, but always miss having a scroll wheel for games. I would love to see more scroll wheels on laptops.
I remember looking at a Sony like this at Best Buy that was a PIII 800 MHz for college. I think that Sony had a docking station. I ended up getting a VPR Matrix 200A5, which was a great laptop that unfortunately constantly broke down.
Older Sony Vaio stuff is hard to find because the people that could afford it back in the day threw it away when the next best one came out. I have had friends tell me this when they were growing up their parents would toss an old laptop and he would get it back out of the garbage and store it, only if they still worked. He now has the biggest Vaio collection I have ever seen. Thanks for the video Collin and have a nice day.
Hard plastic scroll wheel was a good call. Imagine trying to find a replacement for that in 2022 when they've all turned to goop if they were rubber.
I hate how Sony forced its consumers to use two peripherals that were already DoA. Memory sticks started to die and wain after SD Cards and micro SD cards were coming into fruition which could hold more data while also being more accessible.
Sony had to Sony. Whenever they released a new piece of hardware, you just knew that it would have some wacky new proprietary storage media.
NO different than Apple
I found an old Vaio, VGN something or other, I think it's smaller than this one runs XP has wireless, widescreen mode, and a DVD drive. I love it so much! Sony was really an unsung hero back in the day.
Oh I wanted a VAIO so bad back in the day, but they were well out of my price range.
I think I have the exact same or a very similar one just like it. My Mom used to use it, and she says it impressed her coworkers. I actually have most, if not all of the stuff it came with.
I'll be honest, using the program 3DP chip helps finding just about any driver out there if you ignore the ads
Sony Vaio had much better design than most netbooks, I wish most netbooks were like Sony’s laptops, because they have features and try to distinguish themselves than those watered down netbooks from the late-2000s that were so unreliable!
Oh wow. I have a Vaio TR. It's the same idea - little 10.6 inch display, but high end specs and not for a cheap cost. It even packs a DVD drive, and uses a 1.8" HDD to save space, as well as using those proprietary Sony MicroDIMMs.
Sony used that external screen lock quite a few times - the PCG-QR line used it and so did the much later VGN-FE line. The SRX line is quite neat, but the hinges do seem to be quite weak in my experience.
I love VAIO computer. Never got one. Also with this video I remembered my first digital camera. It a Sony (model missing) with a Memory Stick of 16MB.
That Sony VAIO styling 👌
Another useful tip for drivers (in general) is the tool Snappy Driver Installer. Not sure how effective it is with VAIO hardware, but worth a shot!
Isnt that the one bundled with a load of spyware :')
@@j_r_- No, actually it doesn't have any viruses and every computer I repair or build I'm using SDI because it's (almost) guaranteed to install every driver for every component. Why I'm saying it's "almost" guaranteed? Because usually installing Synaptics drivers through SDI is clunky, and there was a problem to install a proper GeForce Go 6150 driver for HP Pavilion TX1000 on Windows 10, because it bluescreened whenever you rotated the screen into tablet mode. Other than that, it does successfully install drivers on a new desktop hardware and even on things like my good old IBM ThinkPad T43 :)
I think Sony didn't use the 6-pin Firewire connector because the CD/DVD drives have different power requirements than what the standard provided and it was intended for external optical drives. The Sony VAIO Firewire DVD drive I have is 10V at 1.5A. Looks like Firewire is about 12V but only at 0.6A per port.
I have a Japanese SRX7E. It's pretty nice and more usable than the even smaller C1 PictureBooks. There's a 11n compatible WiFi PC Card with XP drivers I picked up so I don't need to use an ethernet cable to get it online. Sony VAIOs from the early 2000s are the most interesting PCs as they had both style and unique features compared to what other PC manufacturers were doing at the time.
This gentleman's collection is the Jay Leno of retro technology.
had a similar vaio older model that didn't have built in wifi- However, had it been 6 months newer I would have still had it in use for all my dvds just for fun (external dvd required). 2 gb memory, nice and small - even the tsa at the airport couldn't believe it was a working computer... had to turn it on to prove it to them. but sadly the battery has permanently died. after all these years.. fortunately I had finally retrieved my photos from it. - it is unfortunate that they were always so pricey. had it been more consumer friendly it would have been easily a favorite model. Had some old games that were totally fun to play too. I still have it, just an expensive paperweight now. but it held a "cozy" memories for me, so haven't trashed it.
Selling off the Laptop brand was one of the biggest Mistakes Sony did. Imagine how they could have pushed Blu-ray by adding BD-R drives as standard optical drives to their laptops while everyone else was only adding DVD drives. Even the band Kraftwerk relied on Sony VAIO Laptops during their live Shows in the early 2000s. THAT was their mobile Kling Klang studio that they carried with them.
I’ve loved the functionality of the Fn key next to the arrow key. Miss that.
Love your channel great work :) you are always so good to inform us about the stuff you make :)
I was a big fan of Vaios laptops! I miss those old keyboards!
Netbooks drove Sony nuts. We were selling these little Viaos the lawyers and businessmen for a couple of grand and along comes netbooks for literally 1/10 the price
I always dreamed of being able to afford a nice Vaio in those days. super expensive, but super cool.
I had one of these back in the day and was quite fond of it. I'm sorry I sold it, though I used that money to buy a VAIO TR which I still have.
oohh I've seen that one in the early 2000s in a local store and wanted it so bad because of how small it was, but of course it was WAAAAY over our budget and our family didn't really had the need for a laptop until 2004 when we got two Acer Travelmate 290 with Pentium M and Windows XP, but they were 15 inch.
The voltage on the 6 pin port is the reason it's not advisable to hot plug firewire. Most camcorders use 4pin, so a 4pin to 6-pin cable could ruin overload your camera's firewire controller and destroy it's ability to transfer data.
Very cool little vintage laptop! Great video!
The Pentium iii mobile was amazing the moment it came out, and then over about 18 months it just...... fell to pieces.
XP SP2 absolutely killed it :(
I have one of those notebooks and the external cable and drive, no hard drive. I will have to see if I can dig them out later tonight. If I find them they are yours if you want.
I get Action Retro vibes from this with that wavy hand.
I always liked computers where engineers' only limits where the technology available at the time.
Always wanted a Vaio, but when I finally made my own money, they were pretty much not being made anymore
In the early 2000s I had a compaq with a usb wifi card, I wanted one of these VAIO machines so badly it hurt. Back then Myspace had just launched, Torrents were exploding onto the scene, and IRC and forums were the most popular places to communicate and share memes (though they weren't called that back then). It was a much simpler time and I miss it.
That Videoportal is actually not propiatery at all. That’s mini VGA. It was used on a lot of netbooks and laptops, even iBooks
Just a small correction - that video out is a Mini-VGA connector. It's not particularly proprietary - it was just rare to come by. I believe that some Apple iBooks of that era also used the same connector for video out.
These older machinese usually had excellent keyboards. I prefer these types of keyboards for programming over most of the machines that are on the market today. These machines also can take quiet a beating and nothing will break, while some of the new laptops, especially ultra books, can't take much abuse at all. Different times.
I've got an Asus EEE PC 1000H and my Asus E14KA will arrive tomorrow. I'm interested in seeing the progress made. The Intel Celeron N4500 isn't a beast but it can play some modern games which is just wild to me, seeing as the Intel Atom N270 struggles with even the simplest of games. I love these little machines and the new Asus I got seems really appealing for the price. Only downside will be the screen I think, but if the rest is nice, I won't complain 😁
Would love to maybe see the Asus E410 on here, even if it's too now for this channel. There's barely any information or reviews online and it does compare to a Netbook in size, so it might still fit here!
@@user-yi3ox8wy4k Yeah, it was neat. Still running well for me with Windows 7, even playing some games like Half Life. But unfortunately it's too limited now, with only 32 bit support, 2 GB of RAM and just a single wimpy core 😓
I still own that one, or at least one very similar. I'll have to look up the model.
I love this channel so much
Daily drive one of these during my college years
Oh, this looks like a rather fun device to play with. And if it actually has some power, it might be not as much of a pain to try and use as netbooks are, now.
I remember seeing this at a computer store, I wanted one so dang bad
Colin, I could listen to you talk about Sony stuff of any type all day long. Wonder if you'll ever look at the PEG-UX50? It was superpowered PDA back in the day, and I've always wanted one. Would love to hear your thoughts on it. Great job with the video!
At great video. Definitely Sony in its prime at the time. They made beautiful laptops.
I used that very same wallpaper on my old Vaio K37
tbh i have tons of retro laptops and none of them come with the recovery image, I just use aida64, hwinfo and the windows device manager to check all components and the hardware ids/current driver version to have a "known good/working" version and make backups of everything so if I need I could just get the .inf files along with the .dll and such of the specific driver and use that one if I cant find any online. I thought this was how ppl did this stuff by default lmao, never been fortunate enough to find recovery disks or partitions or whatnot, I get them from a local 2nd hand store that sells them as is and half of them are e-waste but I love to tinker w them tbh. Im jealous of this one tho it looks super cool I love how the display has that weird glass/plastic frame like a Nintendo ds kinda? its a neat device indeed
As a long time Apple computer owner I am so glad Apple never attaches stickers to computers advertising the installed OS or the Intel Inside stickers. These stickers detract from the look of the computer. Sometimes the Wintel computers were actually well designed. The stickers looked tacky.
Oh hey I have one of these. It actually came with a PC card external CD drive. Sadly the display hinge on mine is broken and doesn't stay in place.
Cool Vaio. Early days that Sony makes it special.
If you look at the screen lock, it was similar like psp's lock.
I believe that VGA port is a open standard called Mini-VGA. Correct me if i am wrong :)
my snow white ibook have one of these for vga out
Ive never seen a blue trackpad before.
Sony always loved their proprietary connectors and such, didn't they?
Oooh, having a scroll wheel and back button by the touchpad is a damn cool idea, though. I kinda wish my Vista-era Acer laptop had those!
I would've killed to have a SubNotebook this beefy. Wow~
hi, about that sony 8mm vcr, you should try the fingernail trick and not alchohol because the 8mm tape is metal, dissasemble the unit so you can se video drum, insert a tape and press play, while the drum is spinning put surface of your fingernail on part of the drum above the tape, it helped me a lot of times where i had no picture and after i did this it showed the picture, dont worry you are not going to damage the drum because it is more durable then a human fingernail
I got one of these for free a couple years ago. but it had been dropped and smashed up. Screen is good, but it won't boot... not sure if its worth trying to fix, but it sure is a cool size!
It was odd at the time that Sony had this and the pcg505 with very different designs but similar pricing and capabilities
Awesome i have this in my collection it's still factory sealed and never been opened .
I had a Vaio as a work laptop and had to wipe and reformat the drive. Unfortunately, the CD ROM died during the reformat. I was able to get an early version of Ubuntu loaded and it went to another technician to use afterwards. It was a pretty nice laptop apart from the drive dying.
When I listen to you I feel like it's Ben Folds behind the camera - taking a break from making music. Y'all sound very similar. Sony made some really neat "almost netbook" laptops back in the day like the UX Micro PC or the VAIO P. It's crazy to think how far we've come from the killer Pentium III and 20GB HDD days!
Would love to see a video about the Sony Vaio series P, it was a true misunderstood device very ahead of its time
Omg I have a Sony vaio desktop and THE DRIVERS AAAAAAAA
Excellent video 😎👍💯
To think that this little netbook from the early 2000s has more ports and connectivity than a modern top-of-the-line notebook...
A perfect companion for the MVC-FD200.
I remember Steve jobs saying he liked Sony laptops and I think these laptops was the idea for what became the MacBook Air.
That Mavica though!!!
My God, Colin, your hands / finger’s are shaking a lot. Everything's all right? Best regards!
I don’t understand the relation to netbooks in this video at all. Netbooks weren’t a thing for another decade, and were made for a totally different market.
This was a sub-notebook. There were laptops, and notebooks, and sub-notebooks. It wasn’t gimped like a netbook, it was just optimized for portability.
I had an R505 back then, also a mobile Pentium III-based machine with many of the same design characteristics - 384MB RAM limit, the same I/O but all standard plugs, nice large responsive touch pad with Jog Dial, etc. It came with a docking “media bay” that would add CD-RW/DVD and floppy drives, and had a port replicator-style back panel with all the I/O. It could run while on battery if you needed drives on the go and didn’t mind the form factor of a typical more chonky laptop. But then you could just pop it right back off and go slim again.
There wasn’t anything “netbook” about that computer. This wasn’t Sony “not cheaping out” with full resolution panels and contemporary processors, it was just a very slim and portable laptop, competing with full notebooks, but smaller. They crammed as much as could reasonably fit and function in the space, and I adored that computer. I drove it straight into the ground over years of use. Played games on it too, even with the Intel IGP. Unreal Tournament and Myst III - Exile ran gr- eh, good enough.
The VAIO line of computer always looked to me very expensive, just how much did that thing cost when new?
That proprietary power connector is the same Sony used in their video cameras?
It look like a nice addition to your collection, if price is right I wouldn't mind having one and the fact that is a PIII is a plus to me.
Thanks for the video!
I have a Vaio, not this model, but it died a death long ago. Before that I used the memory card slot to transfer files from my computer to my PSP.
I could listen to this guy talk about sub-notebooks for ever....
*¡pondering and wondering on purchasing either a Samsung notebook computer or an Apple notebook computer!* - 9:27 pm Pacific Standard Time on Thursday, 27 January 2022
Colin, I think you should be reviewing SR33 instead of this, a rare misstep for you dude.
Nice video, like it, thanks for sharing :)
I once had a Sony Vaio notebook, inherited from my dad, and was cured of them after that. I more gladly used the Gericom i had before that, more stable, more servicable and not with that pesky glossy LCD.
i love it all ready
Hello, I used a translator.
Please, I need the PCG-SRX77 drivers (windows xp) to control the brightness of the screen.
I have searched but haven't found them.
Thanks.
For a Netbook, this is probably one of the most interesting ones.
I could be wrong but I think that display out looks a lot like mini-VGA? iBook G4s iMac G4 and eMac used it I think, a precursor to mini-DVI and then mini-DisplayPort 🙂
I have one that looks the same but has a slower CPU. I ran into problems to clean install WindowsXP because I didn't have a valid key. I ended up installing Windows98SE on it. I was able to find all drivers so that there was no unknown devices in the device manager, although it took a while to locate all the drivers for Windows98. I wonder how people deal with the license keys for legacy OSs. Also, it seems only small size memory stick models are supported, like 64MB. I got an adapter for later memory stick models (DUO?), but it doesn't recognize it.