This Laptop is Unbelievably Tiny - Sony PCG-U101
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- čas přidán 26. 08. 2024
- This #PCG-U101 was my daily driver laptop back in 2005, and it was uber impressive back then when you consider what it could do in such a small frame.
Bear in mind that back then it was essentially a full-sized laptop or something like a Palm or maybe Windows CE PDA.
This thing was incredible and I'm so glad I've managed to pick one up for my colleciton.
Special thanks to Matthew Miller for posting about his PCG-U101 and his adventures getting Linux to work on it, you can find his website here:
mattdm.org/u101/
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This little beauty deserves a Compact Flash card as a HDD replacement.
I’ve got an MSATA adapter on order for it
Got a video on the upgrade and performance comparisons?
If this is the same as the Ipod HDD, then its a PATA ZIF connector. There are several PATA ZIF SSDs available. HP used one in their earlier Netbooks.
Update?@@TechMadeEasyUK
@@agenttexxNot all iPod models used ZIF. Some had CF-style connector.
I used to go to work in the 1990's and pass a Sony Shop in Chatswood here in Australia... Honestly they had the best stuff back then. I used to drool over all the light blue and purple plastic devices that my budget could never stretch to. The ones I used to go nuts over where the Clie handhelds, there was just something magic about their industrial design. I wish we had shops and design like that these days. All the black rectangles and metal PC's are kinda boring. Great video too.
Good old days when devices were made by engineers not by marketologists.
I love VAIO computers when I was young! they are slick, they are cool! I simply don't know what went wrong with Sony with the VAIO computer line
This looks like it was a great and between portability and actual usability, unlike by other mini laptops of the time.
And it looks gorgeous
"The tiny keyboard is a stretch for my hands" - I beg to differ on that expression, sir
GPD is one of the last handheld laptop manufacturer.
That's GPD Win Mini & Win Max grandfather,
Still cool, even by today's standards.
Feels like GPD to took over from Sony 🎮
Dang, I am mad in love with this tiny thing. So long as a machine can play Unreal Tournament, it's immediately super valuable to me 😂 UT99 is always the first thing I install on any retro machine capable of running it! 😁
It’s for sale 😂
@@TechMadeEasyUK 🤣 How much? Hahah who am I kidding, I'm broke lol
I love my PCG-C1XS. No one was ready for me to show up and whip a laptop out of my pants... and then edit broadcast quality video over firewire on it.
5:40 the 4 pin i.link connector that Sony liked to use did not carry power which was great for their camcorders but not so great for their external cd drive which was a better way to connect them then over USB 1.1 and then later 2.0. Thus the added an extra power connector on some of their systems. And I think that might be mini VGA? It looks like an apple connector but I could be wrong. I do know that there was a few systems that Sony shared their or the other way around Apple shared their video connector with Sony. So you could claim it wasn't proprietary but when it was only used on very few other systems. I believe there's only two devices that use the "micro DVI" port the original MacBook Air and I don't remember what Sony device.
Mini VGA indeed, as proprietary as non-proprietary standards can get I would say. Didn't even know anyone other than Apple used those.
The mini/micro ports are so weird, the worst is seeing something like a full PC graphics card with mini HDMI on it instead of the full size connector.
Looks pretty much like a mini-vga port to me. Excellent video, btw.!
Ooh, you could well be right! Thanks
Amazing video, great trip down memory lane (I always wanted one of these!)
but if i can point something out for future videos if you don’t mind: there’s a super high-pitched overtone in the voice track that’s a little bit painful to my ears. Maybe you already do this in your newer videos, but if not, it’d do wonders to run your voice track through a low-pass filter before exporting. ❤️❤️
Thanks for pointing out. I can’t hear it myself (joys of getting older) but others have pointed it out too. It doesn’t seem to be present with my more recent videos
What a sexy, smart piece of kit this VAIO is. Thank you for sharing.
Well here’s another memory jolted back into my consciousness. I worked for a Sony Authorized Service Center in the US. Believe it or not, customers abandoned thousands of dollars worth of computers and electronics on a regular basis. I was able to buy a working machine like that one for relatively nothing. Impressive multi media preformance for something so small.
watching this on my GPD Win Max 2 right after playing a slightly older game on it was crazy
As a Dell Mini 9/Dell Inspirion 910 enjoyer the diminutive size of it isn't shocking at all. I also love my HP Stream 7, I may develop a love for mini computers if I'm not careful.
The video port is not proprietary actually! It's a very uncommon for Windows standard called MiniVGA. It was basically the only thing Apple laptops used at the time tho so you can find adapters for it pretty easily if you don't mind the Apple iBook white color.
My Gf had one and i Had the Acer Aspire she was envious at the performance cuz we would play silly games together lol
the dell version had a way better setupp sytem wise for work and the aspire somehow had better cooling and was thinner lol but the battery was fat as fuck in the back and kinda worked like a cooling stand
Both the design style and the performance though only for its time still only bare a resemblence to the gpd line of computers nowadays especually the win max. Small and powerful. It's one thing to say it it's another to be the smallest and still be able to play AAA titles.
This device looks like something GPD would produce today, including the "gamepad" mouse replacement above the keyboard.
Which is not only quite impressive for the time but also shows how that particular kind of PC is still something people ask for. (I use a GPD Pocket 2 myself when not at home...)
Damn that's awesome. I wish more "mainstream" companies still made stuff like that. Hell, this thing has more IO than on a modern device. The closest I can get is the GPD Win Max series, which is incredible, but it's not coming from a company that has as much presence as, say, Sony, ASUS etc.
Sony did some weird and wonderful stuff in this period. I wish they hadn’t stopped
I had 2 of these over the years it was so good. The extended battery pack was amazing. Rotation was used to change the screen so you could hold the laptop like a book and read e books. Thumb phrase was programmable.
I know, right?
Always wanted one of these back then.. I had a 10” sr17 back in the early 2000s but one of these Minis was always at the top of my want list!
Very cool machine. There’s something about Sony’s design from this era that’s just awesome
If you want really pocketable, check out Sony's UX range - I actually used one back in the day, for developing Pascal software. It was quite usable when docked, not so much on the train due to the miscule screen and keyboard. Like the U1/101, the UX also has a 1.8" parallel ATA spinning hard drive, now available cheaply as an SSD from AliExpress and easily upgraded. My absolute favourite though was the Sony P-series - super small, insanely high-res screen, a keyboard you could actually type on and again, readily upgradeable to SSD. And the killer feature - it had a lanyard loop! The P-series had an Atom processor and shipped with Vista making it unusably slow. After installing a super-light version of XP however, amazingly responsive and I still use mine with an XP-only photospectrometer (the UX280 is an ornament in a drawer). If you ever need cut-down XP Acronis images for the UX or P-series, let me know..
The GPD Win Mini is exactly this with modern specs. It even has the lanyard holes!
I picked a U101 recently and i'm very happy with it. Old games run great thanks to dosbox. Duke3D runs a little slow though. I have converted alot of movies and music video clips to 720x480 and they play great nice and smooth. The battery still fully charges too. I have the IDE to CF adapter and a CF card running XP.
The vaio P series was a great mini pc. With Atom cpu, was a great device, with a stunning screen.
I had a 8 inch acer aspire 1st gen and the new 10 inch 2nd gen at the time the atom was crazy I even had one in my Asus Zenphone and hacked it to run windows when i was done with it lol
I love the small form factor laptop market.
My GPD Pocket(gen1) was an amazing tool at work
Lenovo Legion Go is a great combination device with removable controllers for when you dont want to game, just wish it had a way to hard mount a Trackpoint 2 style keyboard, like the Lenovo miix 320 or microsoft surface book line of 2 piece convertible laptops that actually functioned like clamshell laptops when their keyboard was attached, as opposed to those floppy folio style keyboards common on the standard Microsoft Surface or Lenovo M500/700 series.
I had a onexplayer that had a little folio keyboard, which I thought would be great. It was so bad lol
@@cloudycolacorpYea i try to insist on rigid detachable keyboards at work but often times these are 'professional' devices and spec for spec can be as much as $700 more than the same thing with a folio
I saw one of these in a magazine when they came out and i wanted one so badly lol
I've still got that Samsung 19 inch laptop. Still works with upped mem, an ssd and W10 for basic functions. My back up and the optical drive comes in handy.
This gives me strong EeePC 701 vibes which I used as a daily driver for a couple of years.
I so wanted one of these back in the day. Memories....
My Sony Vaio UX has a much smaller keyboard. The U101 is just large enough to be still useful.
I wish 11" laptops were more common---- I'm running a lenovo 11e yoga.. and I love it.
Yeah I think so too, unfortunately they're not too common, and that's an adorable laptop !
That thing is so adorably small that it has that option to type the same way as a Japanese phone: those orange hiragana on the Q, W, E, A... until C are exactly what a Japanese phone would have on it's 1 - 9, *, 0 and # keyboard. Somewhat similar to how we typed in numerical keypads, but with 5 directions instead of 3 presses.
It works as follows: each key from 1 to 9 has one "a" phones, one is "ka", then "na", "ta" and so on. You press the corresponding key and 5 options exist: just press on it and it's the "a" character, hold it and press any of the 4 directions for the other ones "i", "u", "e", "o", same with "ka" for example ("ki", "ku", "ke", "ko") and so on. 0 handles "wa", "wo", the consonant sound "n" and vowel sound extension (like doubling a vowel in roman characters), while "#" does special characters like ! and ?, and "*" does small letter (for example the "tsu" character is used in small size to extend a consonant sound that will come after it like doubling it does in roman character writing), plus the "dakuten" and "handakuten" marks that change the pronunciation of the characters.
i think sony made one that is even smaller than that one. this was years ago when a small store called Comp USA was still going strong. there was this laptop that sony made where the screen slides up to revel the keyboard. i was a poor man working check to check and could not afford it at that time since the price was around $1000. this was super early 2000s too...
I wish they still made laptops like this.
I had 15, then 15 Notebook for Home + 11 Netbook for mobility, then 17 and then 14 inch. And now I know, that 13 inches is probably the best size if you only use a notebook occasionally...
Heh, I used to rock, and still actually have a Toshiba Libretto CT-50, with RAM upgrade and both docking thingimajongs, ie a port replicator strip as well as a desktop dock. It would make this thing look quite big, believe it or not. My CT-50 has died unfortunately, but I used it for many many years. Specs on this absolute jewel of high performance computing is a Pentium 75MHz, a mind bending 8mb RAM and an unfathomable 810mb HDD, and it comes with a kinda proprietary PC card 1.44mb floppy disk drive. Obviously no LAN, much less Wifi, but I did have a serial cable to hook it up to my Nokia 9110 Communicator for internet access back in the day - I'm talking about the mid/late 90's.
I love umpc I own a GPD pocket 2, it's very cool, 8gb ram, windows 10, 256gb SSD, it fits in your pocket and it's very capable
Sony and Toshiba brought their A game... I'm glad 'tiny' is back.
Framework laptops have a physical slider switch for Airplane Mode.
I don't think any other OEMs offer any mobile devices/phones/laptops with this feature anymore. Especially not Sony, which always goes out of its way to implement as many proprietary DRM-locked anti-consumer controls as they can.
I loved my Samsung Q1 (original, not ultra) and it blew people's minds at an anime convention I took it to. It was vastly superior to the iPad that came out after it. Q1 had an 800*480 LCD, ran Windows XP, had 2 USB ports, VGA out, wifi/bluetooth/ETHERNET, a compact flash slot, 512 MB of RAM and a 60GB HDD. And it dualbooted some media player OS
wow, it's in pristine condition... this one and the Vaio tap 11 were my favourite vaios of all time.
Better condition than the one I originally had!
Sony Vaio laptops were beautiful
SSD and something like Puppy Linux and this would be incredible.
Got a Sony Vaio P11 when it was new. It was tiny with a great screen and keyboard. A real marvel of craftsmanship building a notebook. It was amazing - and absolutely useless. A pain in the back regarding performance 😂
I'm just wondering if you've ever experienced the keyboards of the GPD brand UMPCs. These UMPCs are like mini-desktops in a portable form factor with a built in screen. Unfortunately. the place they fail - and miserably at that - is in the keyboard layout. The size of the main keys aren't TOO bad and the space bar is at least maybe twice the size of your Viao, at least from watching this video and using my GPD Win Max. I also have the original GPD Pocket.
So I would be interested in seeing what you think of the GPD line. They even have a modern handheld that is a full mini-pc that is quite easily a Steamdeck killer. Actually I thinjk the last couple generations of the GPD handhelds would qualify as such. And if they ran the same OS... well, there's no doubt in my mind which brand would come out on top.
Hope you have a chance to give some of these units a good workthrough. Hopefully you'll be as impressed as I am.
I think thumb phrase allows you to use the T9 style function keys on the left side so you dould just use a few keys to type with, like when you would text on a phone. Seems pretty useful for a handheld laptop
Hey that’s sounds awesome and I agree it makes sense!
i've been waiting for a windows xp Professional key for 15 years! Finally!
Wow, you can’t have looked very hard
It kind of sucks to know these existed now although I would've never been able to afford them back then I remember seeing the OQO and Sony had a similar device a few years later In the US. I remember looking at the windows CE PDA things thinking it would be really nice to have something the size of a VHS tape that was a full system and relatively usable. Fast forward I find out all this time there's been mini laptops for a long time just not in the US. That's OK though I got GPD pocket3 now it's almost exactly what I was looking for way back then and I've used it a lot. I have also told Ebay a bit for some beige wells, cough Sharp mobilion HC-4600 that I remember looking at so much as a child in OfficeMax (or was it Staples?).
I was also gifted an libretto 70 CT which just makes my head crash thinking that these small systems were around for a long time outside of the US.
The Toshiba Libretto was even smaller.
I'd love a 19 inch laptop. I've got a 17 inch 1440p and it's difficult to see.
It’s not the size of the laptop, it’s what you do with it that counts
It’s a mini VGA port, old Mac’s used to have these
Please a tear-down would be really cool if you feel up to it. Not wanting you to risk anything if you dont wanna, Im sure there are Ribbon cables galore and may need a new dab of Thermal paste, too. Just an idea. Thanks for the vid
I noticed that the Fn and Ctrl keys were swapped. That would bother me to no end. It's funny, because I recently bought a ThinkPad Z13 as a new daily driver, and those two keys are also swapped. It drove me crazy. I found out that I can re-swap not only the physical keys, but the functions as well (Lenovo Vantage had that software), so I promptly put the keys where they belong.
I wonder if that is something they do on certain foreign keyboards.
That port is FireWire (“4-pin”?), would’ve connected to Sony DV cams, as well as some other brands and devices …
i have the strong urge to plug a saitek cyborg 3D pad into it. (that thing was humongous)
The design philosophy between the 2002 and 2003 model feels like 5 years gap
Sony from this period were so progressive
Great video on this tiny laptop! What strategy game were you playing on it?
That was Age of Empires. Not a great demonstration of what this machine can do but an awesome game none the less
You may be able to use the iPod drive adaptors to get na SSD in this, but they do/did make 1.8" SSDs.
I've dreamed of this one when Sony had launched it, but it was a way more expensive than i could afford myself.
5:40
This port is a MiniVGA
I’m going to get that made up as a T-shirt and wear it with pride. We live and learn
Legacy of Kain 🙌
the og GPD-like pc
Interesting device, the tiny space bar is in part a result of japanese keyboard layouts already sacrificing part of that key's size for japan-specific keys.
I have a GPD Pocket 2 which is a much newer device but similar size. I agree, keyboards definitely aren't very usable in this form factor.
I honestly don’t know how I coped so long with this as my daily driver. Being able to put it in my jeans pockets was huge at the time though
prehistoric steamdeck
5:50 Is mini Vga
Thanks!
now I have one more device on my list, this laptop is so cute
Good luck! They command a high price
It looks amazing and what if Sony recreate this model with a ryzen and all the new tech
Sorry to say Sony no longer make PC's or laptops :(
To be honest, I was massively surprised with the gaming performance... Sure, you are playing a game from '99, but still. Back in 2003 that would still be considered amazing considering the diminutive size of the machine!
Corrente alternatives to this?
Thanks a lot
It's not for a wrist strap,it's for a security wire for theft protection.
Like a Kensington lock?
That LCD PPI is so near to iphone's retina display launched with the iphone 4
It’s insane how crisp it is, can’t really do it justice in the video
@@TechMadeEasyUK That's so cool, specially because of it's age. nice video
This slightly thicker but small form factor is perfect. That fact that that no one wants to experiemtn in this space is fustrating. And yes I know gdp, and I have a nanote lol
It could be made even chunkier with the expanded battery, but it really was perfect
I miss my HP mini 210, even if it was slow af
HTC Shift x9500
Seller probably set it up, played with it a bit, then put it up.
Make sure to backup the hard drive or your vaio NOW. If your hard drive goes it could be the end of having all the pre installed software.
Looks like an OG GPD Win Max 2 lol
i see this as the perfect laptop to play gzdoom on and maybe some half life 1
Netbooks please come back to market pretty please
seeing someone play tribes is amazing lol
I think it would be ideal to run moden Puppy Linux distro
It used to run contemporary versions of Fedora quite well!
Sony used to make the most fascinating electronics and gadgets that were so ahead of their time.
QUICKTIME?! OMG
Looks related to the Sony camera computer shown on cathode ray dude's channel.
Kudos Sony not using soft touch coating on this or it'll be untouchable
Different product line, but yeah it’s still Sony messing around and being different. 2000s Sony was fun!
interesting, I would like to have one of that
They do turn up occasionally on eBay but usually command a high price
If this thing actually use the same hard drive that has been use in Ipod, then you can replace that with iflash solution use to replace stock hard drive in Ipod
Good point, thanks!
Shame we don’t have laptops like this today… and yes I know about the Pocket GDP
GPD, Chuwi, whole bunch of smaller brands on Aliexpress.
Did you record the voice over using that thing. There's strange auido effects when you are spending. Like a high squeal.
It’s signal noise from my USB mic. I don’t notice it during editing because my hearing is crap
Sonys products for awhile were very appealing for their design aesthetics. Quality was already expected. Its sad that Sony has moved away from this philosophy. As for the lanyard strap mount, there are some modern tiny laptop device that have them. Many of GPD line of products include them though tbh I think are just a bit to big to be useful that way.
watching this from a laptop bought last 2017
Thanks for your video- I own a Sony VAIO model PCG-4E1L I am the original owner the laptop is beautiful but I am having a hard time to connect it to the internet. It has Bluetooth but it is not picking up the Bluetooth connection. This model come with a DVD player and it works. Just trying to figure out where to take it to make it connect with internet
Does it support modern WPA2 encryption methods? Some older devices only have Wi-Fi cards capable of supporting the older WEP encryption standard and won’t connect to modern networks
I know I would have LOVED that computer in 2003. Runs Soul Reaver WAY better than whatever Pentium 1 junk I had at the time. lmao And portable AoE would have been a dream come true...
I got my original one in 2005 and it was still amazing then!
@@TechMadeEasyUK I bet it was even then! Despite it being low spec, it being so small and portable, strong enough to handle Windows XP. I would have brought it to school every day! I've always had low spec machines back then and would have loved it so much!
Working on restoring one. Any luck with WPA/WPA2 Wifi? If yes, what driver are you using, and what version?
Sadly the WiFi chipset is not compatible with anything other than WEP
@@TechMadeEasyUK ah, I was afraid of that. I am also looking at a mini-pci replacement, but the unique ribbon connector interface makes that impossible as best as I can tell...
@@TechMadeEasyUK Ty!
Sony lost their mojo in 1989 as a result of buying Columbia Studios.
Masterpiece❤❤❤🎉🎉🎉🎉
Thank you!
The title made me think of the Fat Bastard from Austin Powers
And now I need to do a new thumbnail
Eh Panasonic workbook is more real for work and distance travel (equals million plus Yen?)?
I have a 20.1" acer 9810 sitting here
🤯
Soul Reaver 😊🖤
Hey there. I have this laptop but never managed to get the English drivers for it so it stayed inside my closet for all these years. Can you help me obtain all the drivers? I bought a drivers disc back in the day from a seller on Ebay but it didn't go well because there was missing drivers, so i restored it to the Japanese factory installation.
Thanks!
Sure, email me: matt@techmadeeasy.co.uk
I will upload the English restore CD to archive.org and send you a link
we have a modern version of it, lenovo legion go
Super cool device but I disagree that it’s a modern equivalent to this style of laptop. These were never intended for gaming, they were fully fledged Windows devices that could run standard desktop apps while remaining ultra-portable. That said I do think the likes of the Legion Go, Steamdeck and ROG Ally are amazing devices in their own class