- Sony's PCG-U101 page [babelfish]
- The official site. Pretty pictures and stuff, but really has much less detailed information than I've collected here. You can see that the target market for this machine seems to be young Japanese women. Hey, nothing wrong with young Japanese women. (My wife said it's okay to say that.)
- Interview with Designers [babelfish]
- An interesting interview with the U101 designers. The first page is about the PCG-Z1 model (basically, the U101's big brother), but then it moves on to the interesting stuff. I don't think the Babel Fish translation is that great, unless using the pointer resulting in leprosy is really one of the design goals. Unfortunately, I don't read Japanese, so it'll have to do until I can convince someone to do a better translation.
- PC Web review [babelfish]
- A detailed review from the same web site. They seem to like it — the Babel Fish summary is: As for the VAIO U which is changed for the first time the admiration * comfort! The PC which evolved it is. Yeah.
- Inside Vaio Article [babelfish]
- A promo piece on Sony's web site; contains more from the system's designers. Has some interesting info, such as where to find the 802.11b antenna. Babel Fish translation also says something about "the crotch lining fashion feeling". Man, I've got to learn Japanese.
- Vaio-U101 Wiki [babelfish]
- Hasn't been updated since March….
- Dynamism
- Dynamism's been importing and converting cool Japanese subnotebooks for years — they're the big name in this business. And, they're where I decided to order my system from. The experience was not as stellar as I'd hoped; more on buying from Dynamism here. Note: since I bought mine, their price is up $200 and the extra RAM up $160.
- Japan Rush
- Newer, and seem very excited. But they don't update their web page very often and generally were slower than Dynamism at answering my questions. They do offer free shipping, but Dynamism matched that when I asked.
- Conics.net
- Much cheaper, because they don't do any English conversion. Also, they don't do any special value-added warranty service, unlike Dynamism or Japan Rush. Still, installing Linux is pretty easy — as is installing English WinXP, for that matter. This might be my recommendation for anyone who is planning to use the U101 with Linux… please let me know if you have any experience with them.
- Himeya Techgear
- Mainly sells anime and Japanese games; have recently branched out into selling gadgets, too. I'm a bit skeptical about their tech knowledge — they say their ordering process doesn't work with Netscape or Mozilla, for example. And their specs page says that the system has "64MB/512MB" of cache — sure, it's a typo, but it's the kind of typo that should be caught and fixed very quickly.
- I-Cube
- Mentioned for completeness. Their site design is annoying, and worse, they made up a false "MSRP" in US dollars and then have an "Our Price" which is of course much cheaper. Seems a bit sleazy.
- Pyramid Consultants (UK/EC)
- Looks okay. Does minimal language conversion, and provides loan machines in the case of warranty service. Quite expensive, though. And didn't respond to my e-mail.
- Kondara Linux 2.1 on the Sony Vaio U1
- Good English-language site with medium-detailed hardware info and instructions for installing the no-longer-available Kondara Linux distro. Still useful, though, as most of the information is generally applicable. Also has some good tips plus scripts and software.
- browncat.org Vaio U1 Linux [babelfish]
- Japanese site from which the one above got much of its information.
- Linux & PCG-U1 (and U3)
- Less detailed, but has some potentially useful notes.
- Linux on Laptops: Sony
- If you're interested in running Linux on a laptop, you probably know about this site already. It's a very specific web directory, listing links to pages like this one.
- TuxMobil's Sony Page
- A generally useful mobile Linux site, including the document formerly known as the Linux Laptop HOWTO.
- Linux-Sony Wiki
- Vaios have a lot of weirdness-in-common, like the sonypi control device, for example. So a community documentation site is a good idea. This one isn't as packed full of information as it might be, but since it's publically editable, with a little effort from someone, it could be.
- Linux-Sony Mailing List
- The mailing list run by the same site is packed full of information, and knowledgeable and helpful users. Much recommended.
- Steve Barr's PictureBook page
- A great site with detailed information on another Sony subnotebook. The news section often has info on other small Vaio models too.
- Sony Programmable I/O Control Device Driver
- I've linked to this elsewhere on the site, but it bears repeating. If you've got a Sony laptop running Linux, you want this software.
I'm sure there's some very good and relevant sites which I've missed.
Please e-mail me anything that would be appropriate to
add. And yeah, please don't e-mail me anything that wouldn't be
appropriate, thanks.
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