Werkema.com: The Sony PCG-U101

Buying Your Own U101

Unfortunately, Sony has decided to only sell it in Japan, which means that those of us in the rest of the world have to use rather strange means to obtain it.

This thing retails for 160,000 yen in Japan, or about $1,360 US with current exchange rates. Some companies in Japan sell it for even less, as low as 153,800 yen as of June 2003. However, if you buy it in Japan, you have to get support for it in Japan, and you have to get it back through U.S. Customs. Good luck.

The other option is to buy it from one of the several companies that makes a living importing it. There are several importers that resell it:

Kemplar - This is where I bought mine. They're headquartered out of Colorado, and like many of the others here, specialize in importing laptops from Japan. Their web site is clean, although some of the pages simply say "coming soon" (though they claim that a revamped site is coming soon). They've only been in the importer business about six months, having spent some years providing consulting services for other companies before. However, they seem to be aggressively courting potential customers, so it's probably worth your while to talk to them; you may be able to argue yourself a good deal. They charge $1,980 for the U101, but that's fairly mid-range for the laptop: it's neither the off-the-boat $1,450 on eBay, nor the insane $2,199 of Dynamism. What sold me is the customer service: you can talk with these people; they're trying hard to focus on that, and good service is worth a few extra bucks. They offer free shipping, and they will ship the thing back to Japan if there is a major problem with it.

Japan Rush - [Note: As of Dec. 20, 2003, it appears that Japan Rush no longer sells the U101.] This is where I was going to buy mine. They're headquartered out of New Jersey. They offered me a deal of $1,699, including free shipping; however, Kemplar matched the price, and offered better service. The Japan Rush laptop still has the Japanese version of Windows XP, but they can install the English for $200 more. If anything goes wrong, they'll ship it back to Japan to get it repaired. Oddly enough, if you visit their web site, they don't seem to mention the U101, even though they sell it. I know they don't keep many of these in stock, though; see my buying experience to learn why. They also seem to be a little slow on communication, in my experience; I recommend using the telephone if you need to communicate with them.

Dynamism - The best-known of the importers, they were selling it for $1,999 originally, and then decided to raise their price to $2,199. For $2,199, you would actually save yourself $100 by buying a $708 coach plane ticket to Tôkyô and buying the laptop there for 160,000 yen ($1,360 or thereabouts). Of course, that $100 is just about enough to get you from Narita to Shinjuku and back, with meals, so you might only have $30 or so left over for dinner at McDonald's. Dynamism will install an English version of Windows, and if anything goes wrong at any time, they will ship the laptop back to Japan to get it repaired.

Conics.net - They want $1,699 for it, but they don't offer the free shipping, they don't have the return service that several of the other vendors have, and they're headquartered in Japan, not the U.S. Are they any good? I don't know, and I'm not inclined to use seventeen hundred bucks to find out.

i-cube - Seems to be a relatively new importer in California. They wanted $1,799 for it, but they didn't seem to have a very good support policy compared to the others I talked to.

Pyramid Consultants - These guys import into the U.K., and appear to be the only company doing so. Somehow, I'm kinda glad I don't live in the U.K. For a while, I thought they were associated with i-cube, but I'm not really all that sure.

eBay - There are several folks in the Orient selling these laptops on eBay. There have been several auctions of them by lawrencecamera, miffykun, japanatronics, and denki-epolis, to name a few, although all of them are selling from Tôkyô, so expect big shipping and minimal English. Japan Rush has been selling them on eBay too, although I got a better price by buying directly from them. Note that some of the eBay sellers are also under contract by the larger vendors to provide them with U101s and their drivers: they work for the big vendor by day, and sell them on the side on eBay at night.

User's Side is a Japanese PC shop with retail stores in Los Angeles and San Jose (and apparently also now in New York). James Byun claims that they charged him $1749+tax for the U101, but since it's a retail store, if anything goes wrong, you can just walk in, assuming you live in LA or San Jose. They seem to have good customer service, from what I've heard, and like many of the others, if something goes wrong, they'll ship it back to Japan to get it fixed.

Japan Direct sells a basic U101 for $1999+shipping. Their English seems to be pretty good considering that they're located in downtown Osaka (that's a huge city about 300 miles west of Tokyo: I've been there). It looks from their web site that they originally specialized in importing Sony's MiniDisc equipment before moving into other electronics; there are not very many laptops there. Support, of course, may involve long-distance shipping: it's hard to tell from their web site what their exact policies are. However, they do sell all of the accessories for the U101, so they may be a good option if you need an obscure add-on.

If you buy from somebody who sells the Japanese version of Windows installed, and they offer to install an English version for you, I recommend in most cases that you install it yourself. You can buy it cheaper on-line than the $200 many of them want for the install job. I've bought copies of Windows 2000 Professional from buysell101 (now part of directdeals.com), and they've been a very efficient vendor. Last I checked, they wanted $89 for Windows XP Home (OEM edition, which means the same exact edition that would be installed by any of the importers above) and $153 for Windows XP Professional.

Also, in case you want to know, the salesman at Kemplar that I dealt with was Sage Waters (his parents liked the name, I guess).

For what it's worth, the salesman at Japan Rush that I dealt with was Jihoon Kim (who appeared as Kim Ji Hoon in the e-mails, strangely).