What Happened to VAIO? #Helpful Post

hey guys this is Austin do you remember

vo back in the 90s and 2000's Sony

absolutely cranked out weird but cool

designs over the last few years though

things have been a little bit quiet on

the VAIO front ever since they went

independent in 2014 that is until today

with the brand new vo s X 14 take one

look at this red and yeah it looks dope

however the rest of the build quality

sadly does not quite match up with the

looks and sure it feels lightweight

however it just doesn't have that same

premium feel as you would expect when

you're paying upwards of $2,000 for a

brand new laptop it's sturdy enough but

put it side-by-side with one of my

favorite laptops of 2019 so far the

assumed book as 13 it's really no

contest the only advantage here the VAIO

hardware really is just that lightness

besides that this beats it in pretty

much every other aspect speaking of the

Zenbook they do share a very similar

keyboard design in order to have nice

chiclet keys but importantly they also

have a lifted design so essentially when

you close the laptops they go flat okay

that's actually not what that was gonna

happen

but when you open it up you get a little

bit of an extra lift on the keyboard and

this goes a long way and make me feel a

lot more comfortable especially for

longer typing sessions now it might

sound like it being a little bit too

negative about the VAIO but there are

some legitimate strengths starting with

the ports this has more ports than any

other ultrabook I've ever seen so on top

of 3 USB 3.0 ports there's also not only

a USB C as well as HDMI but there's

Ethernet and there's even a VGA port on

a brand-new ultrabook in 2019 yeah

that's a Japanese business man special

like I was saying earlier the keyboard

does have a nice feel and you also do

have a fingerprint sensor onboard what

I'm not a huge fan up is the touchpad

now yeah it's nice to have the physical

buttons but this is just way smaller

than pretty much any modern laptop and

it does date leave i/o just a little bit

now by default it does come with a 14

inch 1080p display but this red model is

the higher-end version with a full 4k

panel now I'm usually not a huge fan of

4k displays and ultrabooks cuz I find

they usually have a little bit too much

of a trade-off as far as battery life

goes but I will definitely MIT this does

look nice super sharp super crisp

unfortunately though battery life is not

the strong suit of the VAIO at all

paired with a small battery this just

feels like a throwback

now admittedly I do use the computer

fairly hard so I've got the brightness

cranked almost all the way up and

high-performance mode on but even so I'm

only getting about three and a half

hours on a charge with this guy pretty

much every other ultrabook out there

even when you're completely cranking out

should give you at least five to six

hours so that's something that I'm not

super thrilled about it's just it's

definitely the weakest part of this BIOS

be totally honest I mean it's fine it's

usable if you're near an outlet but it's

just really weird in 2019 to have a

laptop with that little battery life

thankfully performance is moderate at

least so not only do you have the latest

eighth generation Core i7 onboard this

guy is also outfitted with 16 gigs of

RAM and a super-fast one terabyte PCIe

SSD there's no doubt that this looks

dope in red when you take it as an

entire package the SX 14 just falls

behind not only is a battery life poor

and there's some weird design decisions

but most importantly it is really

expensive this thing starts at 1,300

bucks but if you want to get the Maxell

version in red that's going to cost you

$2,300

put that side-by-side with the Zen book

it's really no comparison I will take

this pretty much any day however that

got me thinking

via used to be the undisputed champ when

it comes to weird and premium laptops so

what exactly happened so as you might be

able to tell some time has passed

because we were waiting for some

old-school BIOS to show up straight from

Japan but there's some really really

cool stuff here so first of all we have

the VAIO X 505 now first glance this

could totally be a laptop that's being

sold today however it actually came out

in 2004 yes my friends we've got a

Japanese copy of Windows XP loaded up on

this bad boy and it's kind of awesome

considering that this came out four

years before the MacBook Air it's

actually not that far behind now yeah

the 10.4 inch display isn't massive by

today's standards but other cool things

is that you actually get some kind of

interesting Fitness I mean this is

honestly thinner than most laptops you

can buy today and this was way before

the days of us PC I mean look this is

literally the Wi-Fi antenna or the Wi-Fi

card now my Japanese skills aren't quite

good enough to figure out how to get

this thing over to English but it does

have a whopping 1.2 gigs of ram which I

think actually someone paid to upgrade

as you might imagine a laptop like this

was not exactly cheap even in Japan back

in 2000

I mean what was the actual price on this

guy 3000 I was new and that was back in

2004 oh yeah ok it's ok you got a 10

gigabyte hard drive you'll be just fine

update I was wrong 20 gigabyte hard

drive that's where it's at right there

it's also surprisingly light it's just

about 2 pounds and a lot of that is just

the battery in the back big part of that

is because it is made out of a composite

carbon fiber now when you look at this

kind of stuff

sure $3,000 was a lot back in the day

but you were legitimately getting

something that was way ahead of its time

whereas the current day bio I mean it's

not a bad laptop but you're still paying

a premium price for something that's

really not and that same kind of League

of wow this looks like it could be made

today if you ignore the fact that

doesn't have a touchpad and has little

nipple nose cools this is we are just

getting started with some of these

awesome old bio designs next up is the

PCG 505 from 1998 oh yeah this looks a

little bit on the thicker and heavier

side compared to stuff that's modern but

again this was the late 90s this was

absolutely tiny compared to what most

people were carrying around now sadly

this model doesn't actually function

although it would be cool if it did we

can take a look at the hardware and see

just how far ahead of its time it was so

not only do we have a USB a port which

Believe It or Not for the late 90s was

very impressive we also have a series of

other ports including my favorite a

little modem that kind of pops into the

side here and on top of that we pop the

little 2 side of the screen we have a

good old stylist now no styler is not a

touchscreen but you couldn't use this in

conjunction with the touchpad to write

the world's tiniest little notes

now if USB and firewire aren't your

thing you could also get this giant

jungle for it now this adds a ton of

additional ports including you have ps2

you have VGA where is this plug in

doesn't go in there partially wait

I'm stupid the cool part about this is

that this was very much in an era where

laptops were nowhere near as good as

desktops for most categories right they

were way more expensive they usually had

terrible battery life terrible

performance but this was a major step

forward toward a super portable laptop

that could actually get real work done

can even add a Wi-Fi card on the side

actually I have one here dummy so with

this now we're online not even having to

use our super cool modem probably one of

the craziest models of i/o ever brought

out was this do you x1 ATP and no my

friends this is not a giant sidekick

this is a full-fledged Windows XP

computer now if you want to talk about

ahead of its time this is absolutely it

now again keep in mind we're talking

about two thousand six here we have a

touchscreen with a stylus it has not

only Wi-Fi but it also is built in

cellular there's even a fingerprint

sensor in both a front and rear facing

camera on this guy and we're talk about

2006 now this is not exactly a blazing

fast system with a core solo processor

and half a gigabyte of RAM but when you

consider just the level of spec you were

able to get in something that's small

it's really impressive I mean seriously

fingerprint sensors are still a good

thing to have on laptops right they're

by no means ubiquitous in 2019 and

especially when you look at stuff like

cellular networks again that's something

that is not standard whatsoever yet he

had this weird little computer from 2006

totally had it I mean that that's

innovation dude like there's no way of

getting around that this was so far

ahead of its time

at least he came preloaded with Norton

2006 so I'm sure that'll be very helpful

for our ancient Windows XP install also

fun fact this was product placement

central and movies back in the late

2000s now he was it in national treasure

but it was even in paul blart mall cop

you know that famous american movie that

everyone is totally in love with right

so the next item is the VAIO p which

came out for the record ten years ago in

2009 I believe it partly shipped with XP

or maybe Vista at the time but someone

who ever had this before us blow it up

Windows 10 on it man you're going to use

this for a week you know this is gonna

be your new laptop for the next week it

runs Windows 10 minutes fully up to date

security patches and all what does that

she's this thing even running we've got

a blistering fast single core Atom

processor 2 gigs of RAM as well as a 60

gigabyte hard drive

but I mean it does legitimately run

Windows 10 I can't believe someone

business like I mean that's so like ah

it's actually I will say one thing a lot

of these computers from this era they

shipped with Windows XP and they were

Windows Vista compatible because Vista

was so much more heavy on the resources

but most of the time you can actually

load up Windows 10 on a Vista compatible

machine and Windows 10 will actually run

better which is pretty impressive

considering that it's like 12 year newer

operating system oh we have Wi-Fi it

sees our Wi-Fi networks are you see this

thing is so cool I'm blown away this

runs Windows 10 I legitimately thought

we're going to turn this thing on its

gonna have Windows XP I mean this thing

even has decent ports you have a pair of

USB ace as well as you can pick up a

dongle which has VGA as well as an

Ethernet on it and on top of all of that

it has a glorious ultra wide display way

before LG ever made it cool now when

these were all new via was known as a

bit of a form over function company now

Sony had a ton of cash and a ton of

interesting ideas and a lot of these

were legitimately super unique but they

also did have some sacrifices right but

that's okay today when you look at

laptops they're all so similar I mean

you get a slightly tapered design you

get a couple of extra ports that makes

it something unique however back in the

day I mean something like this just did

not exist something like this didn't

exist I mean this stuff is so cool and I

think that's absolutely something we

need today in current PC designs more

innovation more willingness to take

risks I mean it is absolutely good for

everyone also this is still my favorite

thing ever I can complain about that