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Questions and Answers

People have asked me lots of questions about the U101. Here are many of the questions and their answers.

17. How long does the battery last?
1. Sony claims anywhere from 3 to 5 hours. In my experience, I've been getting a little over three hours on a full charge under a medium usage load (heavy web browsing with an MP3 player running). If you're concerned about battery life, you can buy the extended battery, which will cost about $400, but which will double the time you can use the laptop (double of whatever you get with the standard battery). You can improve the battery consumption by lowering the screen brightness, for whatever that's worth.
17. What's the keyboard feel like?
1. Pretty good. Go here for more details.
17. How do I use the Sony Recovery CDs?
1. First, read the section on booting. Once the computer is correctly configured, all you need to do is put the first Recovery CD in the drive, close the door, turn the computer off, and turn it back on again. The computer will begin booting from the CD immediately. Eventually it will tell you to change CDs (in Japanese). The Recovery process is slow --- about an hour --- so make sure you have some time available.
17. How do I install a different operating system (WinXP Pro, Linux, etc.)?
1. Follow the instructions on the booting page using a bootable CD or floppy for your operating system of choice.
17. I don't understand how that mouse works. Can you describe it better?
1. I plan to include a section on the U101's trackpoint mouse shortly. For now, just get a friend to let you borrow an old IBM ThinkPad if you want to know approximately what it's like.
17. Do the special keys around the mouse (zoom & rotate) still work if you install an English version of the OS?
1. I don't know yet. I'll let you know when I install WinXP Pro soon.
17. Should I have 256 MB or 512 MB installed in the U101?
1. Depends on what you're doing. XP eats up a lot of memory by itself; with a 256 meg system, you'll have about 80 megs left over for your own use after XP boots. Of course, you still have swap space on the disk, but swapping takes time. If you can fit two or three of your preferred programs into 80 megs (I can, but I don't use Microsoft Office), then 256 is probably good enough. If not (and I think the new versions of MS Word and Excel use around 50 megs of RAM each), then upgrade. On the other hand, if you spend many hours in the same program and it fits in memory, then you probably don't need to upgrade to 512 MB. It's your choice.
17. How long can you work at the U101 before wanting a break?
1. Pretty long. I've gotten in the habit of reading it like the morning newspaper during and after breakfast (with all the news sites on-line, this is a viable option). I've got wireless networking set up, so I've been able to set the U101 right next to my plate of pancakes with no wires attached. I tend to blow up the fonts when I do this, but I've sat and read until the battery runs out, which is around three hours (I know: I'm wasting a lot of otherwise productive time!). For typing at the U101, it depends on your posture; if you have good posture, you can work for at least a couple of hours straight; with bad posture (and that's easy to do with such a tiny thing to look at), you may find yourself hurting not too long after you start. I recommend a table if you're going to be typing for long periods; setting the U101 on your lap is only good for very short periods of typing or reading. It's not unpleasant to hold it up like a book, though.
17. What can the wireless networking (802.11b) do?
1. Wireless networking allows a laptop to connect to a nearby wireless network. The U101 supports the IEEE 802.11b standard, which lets it connect to any wireless access point within about 300 feet. A wireless access point, or WAP, is a little box with antennae, and you can buy it at any major computer store for about $100. When you connect a WAP to an existing network or Internet connection, it serves up that network or Internet connection to other devices using radio waves. So, for example, if you have a cable modem, and you attach a WAP to it, you can use your U101 to surf the web through your cable modem without having to actually run a wire to the U101 (assuming that the U101 is within about 300 feet of the WAP).
           Wireless networking is not a substitute for your current Internet connection. It merely acts like an invisible wire to connect to an existing Internet connection.
           802.11b can transfer data at up to 11 Mbits/sec, which is about ten times faster than a cable modem or DSL connection, and about 200 times faster than a standard telephone modem. However, you will not get speeds of 11 Mbits/sec when you access the Internet, because the overall thoroughput can be no greater than the thoroughput of the slowest link. In other words, if you have anything slower than a T3 line to the Internet and you connect a WAP to it, your speed will be limited by the Internet connection, not by the maximum capability of the WAP.
           In effect, since 802.11b is equivalent to an invisible wire, you can do with it whatever you would do with a wire, such as accessing the Internet for web and e-mail, and sharing files and printers with other computers on the network.
17. What's inside the box when you buy the laptop?
1. See the list here.
17. What's the purpose of the rubber trackpoint replacement caps?
1. After extended use, the rubber cap on a trackpoint-mouse may become worn enough that you can't easily use it anymore; initially, it's very rough rubber to make it easy to grip, but with time, it may get worn down and may become smooth. If that happens, just remove the old cap and put on one of the new ones.
17. Is the software that Sony included on the U101 any good, or is it just junk?
1. Sony included about two dozen programs on it, or at least, there were two dozen links sitting on the Desktop when I first got it. I tried playing with a few of them, but the vast majority seem to be advertising various things in Japan. Supposedly, there's a laptop-desktop synchronization program, and a video plyer, but I haven't used either. Frankly, if you want software for something, download it or buy it. I long ago moved those links into a separate folder where I haven't looked at them since.
17. Is the version of Windows that the importer (Kemplar, Japan Rush, Dynamism, etc.) installs just a regular English XP?
1. The Japanese version of Windows XP Home is different than the version you would buy in a store in the US; the Japanese version is, of course, the one Sony installs initially on the U101. I know that the Japanese version is different because I (still) haven't gotten around to installing the English version of XP Pro that I have for my U101 (gotta get around to that one of these days!) When an importer installs an English version, it's basically the same as the one you would buy in a store, but the importer usually pays less to get it. Windows XP Pro in a major retail store will cost you $300; the OEM copy of XP Pro that the importer installs costs them around $100, but doesn't come with anything other than an official license certificate with an official license number (no box, no CD, no manual, nothing: just a piece of paper saying it's a legal copy). You can buy an OEM copy (just like the one they buy) on-line for anywhere from $100 to $200 (the price varies widely depending on who you buy it from and depending on what else they include with it, like a Windows CD). $150 is a reasonable price to pay for Windows XP Pro. Check out Pricewatch to see what various vendors are charging, but beware prices that look too good to be true (for example, $19.95 for Windows XP Pro is probably not legitimate!).
17. If I buy a retail copy of Windows XP and install it on a U101, will it have the drivers for all the special peripherals installed?
1. No. Most of the peripherals will, in fact, work fine out of the box, but some (most likely keyboard and mouse, and possibly the wireless networking) will have problems without the Sony drivers. Some U101 vendors include the Sony drivers in a folder on the computer, and some include the drivers on a separate CD. Some may not include the drivers at all. You will need those drivers if you install an English version of the OS. If the drivers are not included with the U101 you bought, you should contact your vendor of choice and ask them about it; even if you can navigate the Japanese, Sony does not provide all of them for download from their web site.
17. If I install Windows XP English, and install the drivers afterward, will the drivers be in English?
1. The drivers are not in English. I've heard rumors that there may be English translations of the drivers floating around somewhere, but they're only rumors. However, the fact that they're in Japanese shouldn't affect their operation or their usability significantly, since you'll rarely have to read anything they might potentially say to you. Drivers are invisible if they work right: it's only when they're broken that you have to talk to them.
17. That screen looks really small. Is it too small for heavy extended use, or for <insert favorite application here>?
1. Yes, it's small, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. You can use it for fairly long periods at a time; the longest I've done so far has been about three hours without a break in front of a word processor (I use WordPerfect). I've used it some for software development (Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0), but it's been mostly debugging, not writing code, since it's the only computer I currently have with Japanese Windows installed on it. (I've got the installation CD for Windows XP Pro, but I haven't done that yet because Japanese Windows XP Home has been helping me to find obscure bugs in my code that wouldn't surface in an English version.) In short, I've used it with significant applications for long periods, and have found no problem reading the screen. I do recommend that you use larger fonts or higher zoom factors in your applications just to make the text a little bigger. You don't need to do that, but you will like it if you do.
17. I periodically get notified by my U101 of "Vaio Updates" that are available. Do you recommend installing any of these?
1. The best way to answer this is to ask yourself if anything doesn't work. Do you have software glitches? Does one particular program crash a lot? If the answer is no, then go by the adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." On the other hand, if you answered yes, that something is indeed broken, the updates may be reasonable. Sony attempts with these things to try to find updates to the standard software when the updates are released; however, sometimes updates can break as much as they fix (consider the case of many Windows XP users about a year ago who upgraded to Service Pack 1 and found that SP1 broke many of their programs and sometimes would cause the system to constantly crash). The general rule is that if you have severe problems, you should upgrade, because the upgrades can't make anything worse than they already are; but if you have no major problems, ignore the upgrades, because if the upgrades break your system, you're gonna have a lot of work ahead of you putting everything back together again.
17. Does Sony have any plans to release a US/European version of the U101?
1. To the best of my knowledge, no. The U1, U3, and U101 were all Japanese-only releases, and my sources claim they are apparently still "testing the waters" on the merchantability of the devices. They're apparently not fully convinced that these things will sell in Japan, much less elsewhere, so they've been doing limited production runs of even the Japanese versions. Will there ever be a US/European model? Maybe. But unless the demand for it suddenly spikes significantly, don't expect to see one.
17. I've installed non-Japanese Windows XP on my U101, but now the Zoom/Rotate button doesn't work. How do I make it work?
1. Install the drivers. The Zoom/Rotate button is not a normal key on the keyboard; it gets managed by the SonyPI driver in Windows. This gets installed by default on Sony's install of Windows XP, but since it's a Sony-specific driver, it needs to be installed if you reinstall the OS. Your vendor should have provided you with a copy of the driver's install files; contact them to get a copy if you don't have one.
17. I looked on Sony's web site and it says something like "We ended the number of sale schedules." Does that mean they've ended the U101?
1. [Updated!] New answer here.
17. Can you send me the drivers? I lost them/I can't find them/My vendor didn't give me them.
1. No. This page is for providing helpful information, not downloads and support. I won't e-mail you drivers, and I'm not going to post them on my web site. If you need drivers, talk to your vendor. I'm sorry that I have to be this stringent, but I can't be responsible for supporting your equipment; and equally important, there are grave copyright implications associated with me distributing those things. It's a very murky legal area if I do that, so I'm avoiding it altogether by simply not distributing anything. I repeat: if you need drivers, talk to your vendor. If it doesn't work, talk to your vendor. I will not make exceptions on this rule for any reason.
17. How do I get replacement parts if something breaks?
1. Contact your original vendor. To the best of my knowledge, there is no other way to obtain them, and even that may require some work and a fair amount of money. Don't bother trying to call Sony US or Sony Europe; they'll disavow that the laptop was ever even made. In short, don't break any part of it if you can avoid doing so.
17. Do you know how to remove/replace the hard drive? (or) I have a 2.5" hard drive I'd like to put in my U101! How do I do it?
1. Short answer: You don't. The U101's hard drive is a 1.8" Toshiba MK3004GAH, which is a very special ultra-small model originally designed for use in PDAs and MP3 players (Palms, PocketPCs, Rios, iPods, etc.). You can't fit most laptop hard drives in there; at 2.5", they're just too big. Currently, Toshiba does make a larger 40 GB drive in that form factor, and that's the drive that Sony will probably use in the next model (the UX5). However, Toshiba does not sell these to consumers: If you want to buy a crate of 10,000 drives, they'll be happy to talk to you, but they won't sell you just one.
   
   In short, you can't upgrade the hard drive, not for any technical reason, but simply because there aren't any hard drives to upgrade to.
17. How would you compare the U101 against Sony's TR1/TR2?
1. There's several differences:
   • The TRx is physically bigger. The U101 is like an 8.5x11" piece of paper folded in half, fatten to about an inch thick. The TRx has the same thickness (mostly), but it is wider and longer. Kemplar has a good picture that shows the difference in size between the models. This size difference is reflected both in the size of the screens and the size of the keyboards.
   • The TRx is heavier. Not by a lot, mind you, but heavier: 1.8 lbs. for the U101 vs. 3.0 lbs. for the TRx. The U101 is best compared to a hardcover novel, while the TRx is better compared against other lightweight laptops.
   • The TRx has a faster processor. The 900 MHz Intel Pentium III in it is about 50% faster than the 600 MHz Intel not-a-Celeron-but-called-Celeron-anyway in the U101.
   • The TRx has a built-in CD-ROM drive; the U101 has none. This accounts for a lot of the difference in weight.
   • The TR2 has built-in BlueTooth and a built-in camera, for what that's worth. The U101 has neither, but I personally don't really find them lacking.
17. Does the preinstalled Japanese version of Windows XP use Roman characters or Japanese characters when writing Japanese words?
1. It's a lot of squiggly symbols, mostly. You'll see a lot of Katakana and Kanji on the screen, largely reflecting the dual needs of the software (expressivity of foreign words and compact use of space); there is some Hiragana, but not as much as you might expect. There are also many Roman characters on screen too, because a lot of software that you'll find on there was written in English for English users and imported into Japan unchanged. (Not to mention the fact that the Japanese think English is "cool," although you can tell when they're using it because it frequently gets misused: who else would call a song What's the Trouble with My Silver Turkey? and name a drink Pocari Sweat?) In short, when using Japanese XP, you see a lot of both languages, so it helps to be proficient in both. But if you're reasonably clever, you can still use it without reading any Japanese: the menus may have different squiggles on them, but they still have the same meaning.