Sony Vaio Retro Portables

I had to dig in deeper, the Vaio UX isn’t the only cool thing out there. I like the design of Sony Vaio products, and it kinda seems there is a niche for it. I don’t know who are the big 3 for computers in Japan, I’d think Sony would be up there, then you got NEC, Fujitsu & either Canon or Hitachi, Alright, so if the Vaio UX is too expensive, or not your cup of tea, there are other Sony UltraPortables to buy out there. let’s take this fucking introduction straight from Wikipedia and from Sony’s website too. Wait fuck,… i didnt do prices of the CLie laptop PDA thingy. Oh yeah forgot…

Google spreadsheet link of Vaios – Version 1

Systems covered
PCG-505 - SuperSlim - Sony's first UltraPortable
PCG-C1  - C1 PictureBook - First webcam laptop
PCG-U   - Vaio U - Ultraportable & Slate Tablet
VGN-P   - Super Widescreen Portable
VPC-P   - Super Widescreen Portable
VCP-M   - Vaio M - NetBook 

VGN-UX Has it's own blog post, click here! :)

Sony PC History

1982 – SMC-70, an 8 Bit PC running Sony BASIC, having tenkeyless keyboard, external numberpad, 3.5″ floppy & a fucking Trinitron as the monitor. fuck yea.

1983 – SMC-777, Looks like a fuckin knock off Tandy with a 3.5″ floppy drive.

1987 – PJ-100 – Sony’s first UltraPortable? looks to be like a word processor.

1989 – CDX-A30RF – That 90’s Sexy Black Hi-Fi device. It’s a fuckin CD player with a radio transmitter. holy shit its like an aux tape deck thingy or bluetooth radio for people’s cars. It must have used a fuckton of electricity.

1990 – PTC-500 – Sony’s fucking pen input device… Not a slate tablet, but a clamshell, strange indeed!

1991 – 1995 – ?????

1996 – PLM-50 – Head mounted LCD monitor. I STILL WANT TO BELIEVE. NEED THAT CYCLOPS 90’S LOOK MANNNNNN….. Oh yeah and they also made their first Windows PC? PCV-90! That started the Vaio.

VAIO computer brand began in 1996, and in 1997 they had their first laptop. The acronym stood for Video Audio Integrated Operation, which sounded fucking cool if you’re into mecha anime at the time. First we got the desktop, then the laptop was the PCG-707 (which I didn’t do a price search on….) but a year later we have the Vaio 505 SuperSlim laptop which I did do a guide.

Price guide layout

Model - This has the text of the machine and a link to the sold listings on eBay. I do this on the spreadsheet to just fucking make searching easier on price updates.

Sold - How many units sold, more is better, but in this case, there isn't enough, so they are EXPENSIVE.

Low - Due to how little are sold, these are a deal if they are under $100. May not work at this price, or needs some fixin.

Mid - What you'd expect for a system, might be working, might not be.
High - Should be a working system...

EX+ - Collector's price, or just fucking hard to come across and well... gets sold at a lot. Should come with accessories and maybe a box.

DONT - overpriced. I will have notes why its overpriced, but most of these are asking prices... not sold listings. However I figured to put them out here just for the lulz. Almost all of them are BIN, with maybe best offer (I have a feeling most sellers will not fucking want to accept an offer at EX+ price).

This isn’t a complete list of all Vaio systems for these models. There’s quite a bit of model numbers I don’t know, don’t search for, and really don’t care to find out. With the “PCG-C1” I only found a few machines, but when I search for “PictureBook” I found other machines, from there I search for those specific models found and thats it… I’m not gonna search for “PCG-C1XE” when it won’t show up under “PCG-C1″… because it otherwise would. Now there are some machines that DO have mistypes from the seller, and some that aren’t listed. But even from that, a seller can sell “Sony super small laptop” and it be the fucking laptop I’m looking for, but they don’t even post the correct specs.

Vaio 505 SuperSlim 10.4″ 4:3

• 505 General Search – only 2 laptops, 4 are misc parts/chargers. Low priced unit is untested, but in good visual condition. the high price is botched together, with keyboard yellowing/browning and bad condition, but comes with a 128GB m.2 SATA to IDE SSD. Neither show photos of it booting up. :/ OH and the high price doesnt even come with a charger. lol basically as is. also called it a PCG-505V, but its a 505F? or maybe 505R… since the latter doesn’t exist, I am assuming F, unless wiki is wrong.
• N505 – Ok… ebay has a glitch where it replaces “PCG” with “PXG” and I get totally different results, fkn golf clubs. I really don’t understand why. anyways, one unit with a shit load of stuff and another which is fucking totally disassembled and probably not working at all. Well at least they aren’t parting every fucking part with a random price 🙂
• 505G – “dont price” WHY IS IT SO MUCH? I’m thinking maybe $300 but still… no box, but comes with a bag / cover. idk if $300 is good lol
• 505GX – “dont price” unsold, doesn’t come with a box, so no. 🙂
• 505V – mid sold, high is unsold system, but turns on and no vinegar syndrome
• 505EX – overpriced
• N505E – junk system dissasembled, and sold as random lego pieces
• N505X – Shoutout to germany fucking being based, comes with a shitload of accessories too. No battery.
• RAM – PCGA-MM564SD Sony modules, or KSY505/64 Kingston. Proprietary stick

While looking at these machines, almost all of the systems do not come with a battery, and some even say that the tabs don’t stay? So I guess the battery falls out i guess? idk. a lot of the keyboards have yellowing/browning, I’m not sure if its bromine or something else, but perhaps going the UV bleaching route might be difficult. I don’t know if the key symbols will be ruined by the treatment. On the “others”, these are systems that were not on the Wikipedia. So I’m assuming there’s probably a lot more machines available outside the US and aren’t documented. Oh well.

The VGN-X505ZP is a totally different system than the PCG-505 machines. First off, its way fucking newer, it has a drastically different design (keyboard is placed way forward like the ThinkPad 300) BUT it is super slim, lightweight and has a nicer, upgraded 10.4″ screen. Who knows what other systems are out there, due to the thin nature, I dont think any of these have upgradable “Slot 2” CPU cards like the ThinkPad 770 or 600 systems (I’m unsure if the 560Z is upgradable).

I didn’t do prices for the PCG-707 which came out first, but really I didn’t want to deep dive all Sony Vaio laptops… maybe another day I will, but there’s wayyyyy to many and they have a lot of fucking annoying model numbers that I don’t care to fuck around and find out.

While writing this, I wanted to watch a video about these systems. BBishoppPCM uploaded a video about a PCG-R505TS. Looking at the specs it is a 12″ machine, and I unfortunately didn’t want to go anything bigger than 11″ or was a netbook (for the most part).

Vaio C1 PictureBook

Search Notes

• C1 All – People really want to pay a pretty penny for these things…. wow. working or not.
• PictureBook all – mostly same machines, but found some other models not listed in the wiki….
• C1X – One unit doesn’t turn on but comes with documents, software and the double battery charger thingy and dock. the other unit is as is, untested AND fucking has vinegar syndrome on the LCD. no fucking accessories.
• C1F – Mid with vinegar syndrome and doesn’t turn on with power, sold by an eWaste company, so they put “rare” in the title/description and some chumfuck ate it up… I DIDNT DO THAT SHIT. w/e fuck off. high unit doesn’t come with hard drive (probably the other one didn’t either but w/e shitty eWaste company DIDNT FUCKING FIND OUT what HDD it had), this one did and uhm it’s LCD looks good, it come with charger prob doesnt turn on, comes with the fucking box in mint condition, usb floppy, recovery cd, and it has two RAM slots in it…. PCGA-MM564SD in dual :O
• C1VJ/BP – Low is parts unit, untested, mid is turns on but needs LCD at minimum and battery. EX+ comes with box and turns on.
• C1MV – Excellent deal, A/V cables, dock, cord, PCMCIA DVD & CD-ROM, 3 batteries, and some manuals. hinge has play (legit the seller could have ommited it and “didnt know”)
• C1MHP – High comes with a shitload of accessories…. seems to be turnkey, HDD adapter, USB PCMCIA thingy, dock, floppy, DVD drive. yup & from France. EX+ unit is “modded” with 384MB RAM, 128GB SSD, with a WiFi card and 2G? comes with a battery at least (looks like 3 of them).
• C1MWP – maybe too much money?… you cant log in, and I can’t see specs. who knows, but it has a Crusoe processor at leas!

LETS FUCKING TALK ABOUT WEBCAMS!

the techradar article I’m stealing
Wait wikipedia is better…

1991 – IS THE FUCKING COFFEE READY?!

LETS FUCKING GO. Some students or scientists, or whoever was tired of the pains of not having coffee. Did the fuckers steal my shit I just brewed? yes they did, oh but wait, did someone make more?! So they made a live feed of the coffee back then, for the necessity. It had a shit refresh rate initially at 3 frames per minute, then went up to 1 FPS, so thats better i guess idk. The OG camera lasted up until August 1991, idk if there’s another one to replace it.

1993 – SGI Indy IndyCam

This was one of the first commercially available computers to have a webcam built for it. However, the SGI Indy wasn’t cheap, it was a workstation & was made for high end applications. An Indy cost from $5000 to $16K, a cheap 486 PC cost about $1400 or a 50MHz 486DX cost 1200 pounds with a monitor. Wait that doesn’t make sense, whatever. The damn thing came with a webcam for the price of a car.

1994 – Connectix Corporation QuickCam

This company was the first to produce a commercially available webcam, called the QuickCam. First for Mac, it used an RS-422 connector (plus another) and was 320 x 240 resolution (about 0.08 megapixels) of grayness at 15 FPS. It’s price? $100, One hundred dollars. Whats wild to me is that the prices of “good” webcams are still about that price.

I WISH I fucking remembered what technology or things IBM used with Sony back in 1990-92 when making their ThinkPad… Legit, I swear to Go.. uhhhh ThinkPads, that IBM used some sort of conferencing technology with Sony. Like it was a phone call, but they had video of some sort, maybe like a fax or scanner of some sort? They said some shit was done in the studio in Japan with Sapper in Italy. FUCK. I can’t fucking find the source now.

1995 or 1996 – IBM ThinkPad 850 or 851

Sony’s third(?) laptop line was produced, in September 1998, the C1 PictureBook was released. It was an even more portable machine than the 505, thanks to it’s super wide display and it’s ace up the sleeve came was the built in webcam. The camera was Sony’s CCD 0.27 megapixel sensor that was able to take photos or video in 640 x 480 resolution. The video was limited to 15 FPS, but if you wanted to have a smoother 30FPS, then it would be in VGA resolution anymore, it would step down to QVGA or 320 x 240 res…. Wait, what? So QVGA is “quarter video graphics array”, but if its QHD, then that Q stands for quad high def? whatever.

IBM Files TP 850
iseecars 1996 tercel

The first commercially available laptop with a webcam was the ThinkPad 850 or was it the 851… Although it was not available by default, it can be configured with a webcam and had special software made for it. This was a special laptop though, it was one of the few made with a PowerPC processor. Yeah they made computers with it, Apple made their PowerBooks with it, but IBM? Slept on that shit. However IBM went ass backwards as they normally do with the PC market, it was way fucking overpriced. IBM had this under some special case called PReP or whatever, and it cost a fuckton of money for a base model. Granted at the time you got a lot of power for that high cost, but even then if the high specs weren’t enough, you can def spend much much more. I’m not sure what the 850 cost, but the 860 which was a speedier version, went from $12K to $5400 a year after it’s release… Wait the 7247-721 cost $8300, the 822, $7900 and the 823 was $7700, however the fucking 7249-851 (the 850 i’m talking about), cost $12,400… a fucking Toyota Tercel 4 door cost $12,330!

1995 – Canon CE300 for the PC110 PalmTop

digitalkameramuseum
contact.tumbl
Canon Camera Museum
basterfield

HOLD THE FUCK UP. I cannot find exact proof when the ThinkPad 850 came out with the webcam. Yeah I have my ThinkPad timeline, but… even that can be debatable (yeah i didn’t fucking source every release date and end date, I just did the spreadsheet and then thought of doing that after fucking putting in 200 ThinkPads…) IBM Files has an announcement for the 851, which is dated February 1996, and the machines were available in the market on April 15th, 1996. The lovely little “ThinkPad” IBM PC110 PalmTop was released in September 1995 (in Japan, unsure if worldwide release), and it could be used as a fucking phone too.

Canon made a special PCMCIA-ish webcam for it, that ran only on DOS and released it in December 1995, called the Canon CE300. It was shown off to American audiences at CES in January 1996, so for sure this “beats” the ThinkPad 861 for a laptop having a webcam. If we are splitting hairs, you could have gotten a webcam connected via serial or parallel port (i literally do not know), but the PalmTop was fucking bleeding edge with that slot card webcam. Near the end of the year, Canon had made a Windows 95 PCMCIA card for use in any laptop, and it was called the Canon PowerShot 30, or 30T. So it was basically the

1998 – Sony Vaio C1 PictureBook

C1 PictureBook Wiki
Videomaker PCG-C1XS Benchmark

C1 PictureBook was a first of many things. Its super wide display, super small build, and probably the first “affordable” laptop to have a built in webcam by default. At first it was only available in Japan, and it didn’t get an international release until the year 2000 (I think). With that said a lot of people liked it, and the webcam was called the “Motion Eye”, which if you’ve ever had a PS3 or Ericssoncellphone, then you’ve come across that name. I guess this was what Sony just called their super small cameras. I say this bc none of their mirrorless camera have that name in there, but a lot of their small peripheral devices do.

C1 PictureBook Specs N Stuff

So basically Revision 1 was Pentium MMX with 266MHz, Revision 2 was PII with 400Mhz or maybe a 233/266 if unlucky. Revision 3, they went with the TransMeta Cruesoe TM5600 processor, that was either 600 or 667MHz. All of these had an 8.9″ 1024 x 480 display, which is… like a WXGA display but slimmer, losing 200 pixels (normally 1280 x 800 but instead its 1280 x 600). To think this shit came out in 1998, the ThinkPad 600 was XGA with 1024 x 768, this thing had the same fucking pixels wide, but missing about 150 to make it wide AND IT FUCKING CAME WITH A CAMERA. This shit was based a hell! If it matters, there’s a mono speaker on rev.1 models and were upgraded to stereo speakers from rev.2 and onwards.

Revision 4 is the last we would get… same 8.9″ screen size, but a slight bump, 1280 x 600 resolution, which is not much, but something. Not sure what the graphics are on Rev 1 or 2 machines; I’m sure they are someting similar to the 505, so Neo Magic w/ 2.5MB RAM dedicated. Rev 3 & 4 had ATI Rage Mobility with 8MB. For us in USA, we’d robably et a Pentium II machine or one with the TrasnMeta processor, the “rare” unit would be one from Japan… doubt we will find them on eBay, prob gotta go the buygee way. whatever, I’m not researching that crap, because I’d have to fucking figure out all the auction sites and then mirror evertying I search on ebay… its not fun, tried that with the PS/55 laptops, and I couldn’t find anything much for the ThinkPad precursors. whatever. lets go next.

I’m not sure if I’d want to get one of these, they are really expensive. I guess it’s collectable since it was one of the first laptops with a webcam, but I think the later models having a TransMeta Crusoe processor is a much more novel reason to own one. Still what’s amazing about the camera is that it swivels! Now we get 2 shitty webcams instead of one good one, and the resolution or bokeh is still shit too!

Vaio U

U3 & U1 via JohnBlade87 imgur

U101 – Bigger screen
Kataoka Design

Specs

PCG-U – EX+ unit from japan, with documents, vertical DVD drive… with box. Legit that’s EVERYTHING for a collector.
PCG-U1 – same as above
PCG-U3 – (available unit) working unit from france, not sure if it’ll sell

VGN-U50 – Low in austrailia working, without anything other than charger (needs the keyboard dock). has strap and stylus…. honestly probably good price. the EX+?? lmafo fuck off “used” with all accessories but no photo of it turned on? High fucking doubt it even works. fuck off DVT from japan.
VGN-U8G – Seems to be fully working from AU, headphones, stylus, replicator, foldable keyboard, pouch, charger, trackpoint “knobs”.

The Vaio U laptop was Sony’s next ultraportable, not necessarily the PictureBook’s successor tho. No webcam, and totally different shape/design. However the Vaio U was a cute device, at least the U1/U3 models are… the U101 which came out a year later was a more modern design, and ehhhh its kinda OK, but growing on me, but not as cool as it U1 or even the PictureBook. Anyways, first iterations had the Crusoe CPU, but the next version had a “slower” Intel Celeron M… Not even a fucking pentium? ugh. For what it is worth… at least it didn’t have a Pentium IV. Also it’s a real shame we never got a Pentium V now that we are on the subject, if they were rocky fans, we would probably be at Pentium XVIII or something, ok sounds like a Superbowl game now.

The first Vaio U’s are cool, but then in 2003, a year after the U101, we got the Vaio U tablet. Its design is… very 2000’s blocky/shiny thingy. Also what the fuck, the PS2 was made in 2000 and it was cool as fuck, I get the VGN-U looks like something that could be from Space Channel 5, but just clunkier, maybe a B movie material, but less camp. Okay, whatever. With that said, the Vaio U Tablet as small ass fuck! It was rocking a 5″ SVGA display, not XGA like the previous machine… Honestly this comes off as a blunder, but they needed those buttons for the tablet functionality, and it also came with a keyboard, but the keyboard was a full size unit. We are truly spoiled with our mini keyboards that fit with our phones, and tablets, but this one sadly couldn’t be a one piece or clamshell like what we got today.

What’s the comparison to these? I don’t know, both devices are pretty small. A ThinkPad 240 isn’t as small and the X20 series is bigger, and probably a “better” ultraportable to use. For a tablet, these were still in the early stages, at least for XP based machines. You’re gonna get fucked on finding the correct operating systems, windows XP for tablets is annoying to get. Linux? Best of luck on finding something that works that doesn’t fucking tax the system. I had CrunchBang or #++ whatever it is working OK on an X30, but even then that has it’s hiccups, not sure what willbe good on this thing.

Where was I at? Oh yeah tablets. Well, you had the Motion Computing (Gateway?) M1200, then M1300 or M1400. I can’t find the first “Microsoft Tablet PC” that fit the standard that they wanted, but there’s quite a bit pointing to the Compaq TC1000 a 10.4″ convertible, which may be the first one to do so. If that is too hard to find, HP bought Compaq around this time and made the HP Compaq TC1100 which I find a few hits on eBay for. If you want something more tougher, you have the Xplore IX104 series, there’s like IX104C2 or C3 (squared or cubed, I can’t do that shit and I’m lazy to figure it out). This thing is like, crazy looking, and although it seems to fit function over form, it kinda fits the “rugged cyberpunk” kind of look that is utilitarian, like it was in the era of the Matrix movie, but it is something we might find from Aliens too… there’s a few of them on eBay, and I’m not gonna deep dive on which model came out at whatever year, but, it does check the box for early XP tablet.

rugged pc review xplire ix104
cnet Compaq TC1000
PenComputing Motion Computing M12000

Sony vaio UX

I’ve already covered this in a different blog post, but here are the prices of what I found as a recap.

Sony Vaio P

Yeah, this fucking meme.

• Sony Vaio Type P – No notes
• 1.33 Z520 – All systems booting up
• 1.6 Z530 – All work
• 1.86 Z540 – No notes
• 2.0 Z550 – A bit more pricier
• 2.13 Z560 – wtf 2.13GHz? Wikipedia doesnt have info on this…. hmmm VPC-P11AKJ is elusive? Oh fuck there’s one with a crocodile lid finish! high price is the one sold, EX+ is for the alligator skin 🙂 (which is not sold, but gottdamn!)

Specs

• All systems have….
  • Memory
    • 2GB DDR2
  • Display
    • 8″ 1600 x 768
    • 25:12 Aspect ratio, almost 4:2
  • Graphics
    • Integrated Intel GMA 500
  • Dimensions
    • 240 x 120 x 20 mm
  • Colors
    • Some have only one color, others have multiple
    • NOT gonna bother, only one system came with the fastes Z550 CPU and it’s not a color scheme.

First off…. this is where Sony made a fuckton of laptops with different model names but like weren’t that crazy different from each other… Also I couldn’t fucking find sold ebay listing easily for these. Although it’s known as the Vaio P, it is NOT known by a lot of sellers this way! AND. I didn’t do my due diligence, unlike the time when I was a Registered Process Server, I will cut corners, I didn’t search each fucking model. To me, this machine isn’t really that significant, yeah it is cool, it is novel in a way, but… we have fucking super widescreen phone/phablets/tablets that fit this bill now, and really, you want something like this for the screen and maybe keyboard. I don’t know, I just didn’t want to look at all of this shit, bc there was a lot of models i’ve discovered away from what wikpedia stated, and I don’t feel like deep diving every fucking one. Thinkpads are what I want to fucking “fuck around and find out” vaio’s? They aren’t my shit brah, like sorry. They are kinda cool, but like, yeah. It’s just for the meme and I didn’t want to get crazy over that.

I don’t know what other laptops Sony made at the time, but this one was a fucking mini-laptop. Yeah the ultraportable name kinda went away with all laptops of this era, but it was one. It does have an eight inch screen, which is about the size of the PictureBook. Although it doesn’t have a rotating camera, it has the motion eye 🙂 The laptop’s dimensions are smaller than the C1, but the format is similar, super wide display about equal to the keyboard length. this keyboard might be compromised in wideness and maybe height, but it is pretty fucking close to the C1. Cool thing is that this had GPS installed on a lot of them, so you could use this instead of an actual GPS device. At the time navigation was hell, so you did what you could have done if you didn’t want to bust out the Thomas Guide or Rand McNally map… ok i forgot what was the one I used, but yeah, thanks Google maps (maybe Square?, definately not Apple’s failure of a fucking navigation thing, oh wait actually apple works if you’re fucking stupid and like totally just love design rather than function over form… like if apple made a fucking car, they would fuckiing “invent the doorhandle” and the all the apple dipshits would get mad “OOOOOH BIG THREE DONT TELL ME ABOUT DOOR HANDLES! You sound like Android users! I don’t care Apple didn’t make it first, we have feature now!~ and I love it!”, Fuck right off Tim Apple, ur fucking shit, the M3 Mac Pro is fucking stupid, and y’all are idiots for the Apple Vision Pro… like lmafo wait… hold up. y’all are idiots. You had the iBook and then Powerbook right? And then you had the MacBook and then MacBook Pro… So there has to be an Apple Vision right? but that sounds so fucking stupid. So y’all called it the Apple Vision Pro? Whats next, the Apple Studio? lmafo that is so fucking stupid to hear. This shit is going to be a failure JUST on the naming. lmafo. holy shit man… like, dawg, this fuckiing is so stupid to me. Like i’m a few beers in and it doesn’t make any sense,,, but it, whatever,..)

Sony Vaio M

Nobody wants these things. It’s basically a netbook, from 2010. Pass. Wow Intel Atom N470! At least all the other Vaio’s had a pointing stick of some sort. This one? only a touchpad. the fucking ThinkPad X100e had a trackpoint at least.

That’s all the “old” Ultraportable vaio’s I looked for. There’s probably more out there but eh, I don’t really care much about it, Honestly I found a lot of cool information, the C1 Picturebook is cool as fuck, the U1/U3 are cool looking devices, the UX? Eh, there’s something out there that might be better, BUT still it’s something neat. I’ll have to explore the UMPC a bit more, but so far they are $$$ for the most part, and there’s probably something newer that’s better and worth it. Sony made a lot of interesting devices, I’d say there’s somewhere in between IBM and Apple, with a crazy intent to make their machines smaller than a Toshiba Libretto, but not super comprimised like the HP Jordana… ok I didn’t look at the CLiE or whatever the fuck it is, but that’s… something else, PDAs. maybe if I buy one ill do a price guide, but for now… next up will be the Dell Precision, Apple Macbooks, or try the task of the IBM Thinkpads & Lenovo ThinkPads. The latter is one I don’t want to do.